Quick question regarding using GPT as a host

[FrankyBoi]

Hello, I'm an IT student who had to replace a harddrive due to it failing, and I've since upgraded to an SSD. However, since it's new, I also needed to make new partitions for it.

So, maybe a bit of a dumb question, (I just work with the software, I don't really know the ins and outs of how it works, and searching for it on my own just came up with a lot of ''yeah virtualbox doesn't support EFI/EUFI, etc etc., so it just confused me further), but what type of partition works better with VirtualBox? GPT or MBR? I read somewhere that MBR is used for older systems, and GPT is more for newer versions of Windows, but I wasn't sure whether choosing GPT as a partition for my hosting device would interfere with running virtual machines like Linux distributions or older versions of Windows that don't support the GPT, or is it just as simple as ''as long as Virtual Box can read the files, it will be able to run any virtual machine smoothly.''?

[scottgus1]

''as long as Virtual Box can read the files, it will be able to run any virtual machine smoothly.''

If you're talking about the host PC's physical drive that the guest virtual drive & files will be stored on, then the above is exactly correct.

MBR vs GPT is only pertinent to the host OS's needs. Once the host OS knows how to handle the physical drive, Virtualbox will be able to use the drive.

BIOS vs UEFI on the physical PC is also not going to stop Virtualbox. However, Virtualbox provides its own BIOS and EFI for its guests. Virtualbox's BIOS and EFI are completely separate from the host's BIOS or EFI, and there is no requirement about having to match the host's boot method with the guest. Host and guest are completely separate. (Note that some guest OS's need Virtualbox's BIOS, only a few are compatible and/or require Virtualbox's EFI, see the menual, section 3.14.)

[FrankyBoi]

Okay, that really cleared up my confusion on the whole thing. Thank you very much for the thorough explanation!