Server Hardware

What’s the Difference between MBR and GPT?

There are two main types of hard disk partition tables: MBR and GPT.

MBR stands for Master Boot Record, and is a bit of reserved space at the beginning of the drive that contains the information about how the partitions are organized. The MBR also contains code to launch the operating system, and it's sometimes called the Boot Loader.

GPT stands for GUID Partition Table, and is a newer standard that's slowly replacing MBR.

Unlike an MBR partition table, GPT stores the data about how all the partitions are organized and how to boot the OS throughout the drive. That way if one partition is erased or corrupted, it's still possible to boot and recover some of the data.

What’s the Difference between BIOS and UEFI?

BIOS stands for Basic Input/Output System

UEFI stands for Unified Extensible Firmware Interface

What is RAID and types of RAID?

RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Disks) is a way of storing the same data in different places on multiple hard disks or solid-state drives (SSDs) to protect data in the case of a drive failure.

Popular types of RAID

RAID 0 is consists of striping, but no mirroring or parity.

RAID 1 is consists of data mirroring, without parity or striping.

RAID 5 is consists of block-level striping with distributed parity.

RAID 6 is consists of block-level striping with double distributed parity.

Nested (hybrid) RAID

RAID 0+1

RAID 1+0

JBOD RAID N+N

Non-standard levels

Ex: Hadoop

Hardware RAID vs Software RAID