External drive for Time Machine - MBR vs GUID question

[randy98mtu]

I just bought my first Mac (2.93 GHz iMac) and I bought a brand new MyBook 1TB to use as my Time Machine. I upgraded the firmware to try to avoid any problems with the Firewire that I've seen reported. From there, I forgot about the stuff I had read about changing it to GUID from MBR. I just plugged it in and let Time Machine delete it and start doing it's thing. Am I at any kind of disadvantage? I have a lot of stuff on it, but it's only 1 day of history so not a big deal to start over. I want to do it now if it's the right thing to do. Thanks for any information.

 

[sickmacdoc]

If you might ever want to add a partition to the drive non-destructively (such as to add a partition for a clone copy for bootability or any other reason) or ever have any intention of making the drive bootable, it will require a GUID partiton table map.

In other words to make your drive a fully "macified" drive with no limitations, the GUID map is essential. I would seriously suggest just doing it over correctly at this point since after it is formatted TM will start all over. Trying to move files off a drive later as would be required to partition with an MBR partition table map can get to be a real pain.

 

[randy98mtu]

Excellent. Thank you very much for the info. I don't see myself ever doing anything but Time Machine with it, but being a 1TB, you never know. I think I better switch it just to be sure. Thanks!

 

[randy98mtu]

I think Time Machine did it for me. When I go into disk utility and click on the WD hard drive, next to "Partition Map Scheme" it says GUID Partition Table. So I think Time Machine took care of it for me when the drive was empty. How nice of it.