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This might sound silly but I googled quite a bit on this and found a lot of different approaches.

Basically, I just added a new drive to my system and ran mkfs.ext4 on it (using it for installing games).

Since then I have been using the drive just fine (on Linux). Though whenever I boot into Windows (I don't use that drive there obviously), it would then bother me and tell me that I should choose GPT or MBR to initialize that drive.

I'm now a bit confused and wonder if I did something wrong? I thought GPT or MBR would be necessary only if I actually would have partitions on that drive. Will this cause me issues on Linux on the long run? Should I just ignore the Windows message about that or should I create a single partition on that drive using GPT/MBR instead?

Giacomo1968
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Noobman
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1 Answers1

13

Linux does not need a partition table, and can create a file system directly on /dev/sdb or whatever is your device. This has always been the case, and was once standard with floppies. Apparently, this is what you did with this disk.

Windows, however, requires a partition table that is created as GPT or MBR. For Windows, your disk is unformatted, so it's asking you how to format it. Doing this will of course erase all your data.

You may ignore this message of Windows. If the Windows message is too bothersome and you wish to stop it, you need to format the disk, then under Linux create a partition and format the partition as ext4. Backup your data before doing that.

Windows ignores ext4 partitions, which are anyway badly supported and usually require third-party tools to use in Windows.

For choosing between GPT and MBR, better choose GPT, as explained in this answer.

Jeff Schaller
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harrymc
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