Hybrid MBR

Why?

If you're like me and you only have 1 SSD formatted with GPT and you want to install a legacy operating system on your computer for experimental purposes, you may want to consider Hybrid MBR or just buy a new SSD.

Refer to the gparted docs for more info.

My Experience

Hybrid MBR is very clunky and can cause many problems, so it should be avoided in general, as stated by the documentation.

My experience on a Windows-Linux dual-booted PC is as follows:

• The partition scheme was:
  • Windows
  • Hybrid MBR
  • Linux
• GRUB did work, but the Windows Bootloader broke
• The Hypbrid MBR partition was recognizable in Linux and by Install Media of Windows XP through QEMU using physical disk passthrough.

The Windows Bootloader breaking isn't quite the surprise, as I did not hybridze all Windows partitions like the documentation suggested. Anyhow, I've stopped using Windows since then, and allocated more space to the Linux partition.

I am planning on experimenting with it to run legacy Operating Systems on my modern PC—unfortunately, by using BIOS emulation as it is a UEFI class 3 machine.