GUID vs MBR

[nadnerb]

Goto Disk Utility, select your disk, then the partition tab.

There's an option (or something similar) button there which you can choose MBR or GUID.

[parra4529]

to assemble a collection of 3.1 to 7 win I can do it in some way a guid? 3.1/95/98/2k/XP/Vista/7 ie what happens to me is that I want to use the chameleon 2 as bootloader, but I do not recognize the OS installed in logical partitions em guid solve the problem?

 

guid and can also modify the partitions with the same programs I've used so far? as acronis, partition magic partition wizard ..?

[srs5694]

to assemble a collection of 3.1 to 7 win I can do it in some way a guid? 3.1/95/98/2k/XP/Vista/7 ie what happens to me is that I want to use the chameleon 2 as bootloader, but I do not recognize the OS installed in logical partitions em guid solve the problem?

 

guid and can also modify the partitions with the same programs I've used so far? as acronis, partition magic partition wizard ..?

 

The GUID Partition Table (GPT) is a new partitioning system that's incompatible with the older Master Boot Record (MBR) system, except insofar as GPT includes a "protective MBR" that's designed to make MBR-only utilities and OSes think the disk is completely filled with an unknown partition type. Prior to Windows Vista, most versions of Windows didn't understand GPT; see Microsoft's GPT FAQ for details. Thus, GPT will be worse than useless from the point of view of most of the OSes you want to install.

 

If you want to multiboot every version of Windows from 3.1 (really DOS is the OS in that case) through Windows 7, you'll have a hard time with partitioning, and GPT won't really help. Your best bet is to look up some exotic third-party boot loaders that can juggle partitions in and out of the MBR's limited set of four partitions, to use multiple hard disks, or to install multiple versions of Windows on one partition. A better solution to multibooting such OSes, though, is probably to run them in a virtualized environment. You could use Windows 7, OS X, or Linux for this and run the "lesser" OSes in a virtual machine. This would solve a lot of the multi-boot problems, since each OS would have its own virtual hard disk (which would be a disk file on the host OS). OTOH, this would reduce performance and put a virtualization layer between each OS and the hardware, so in some cases this might not be acceptable. In any event, you might be better off asking for details of how to proceed on a Windows forum, since as far as I can tell, what you want to do has little or nothing to do with OS X or Hackintosh configuration.