clone MBR SATA 3 SSD to NVMe drive?

[cmdrdredd]

So I read that NVMe drives have to be GPT formatted so I was wondering if it was possible to clone a SATA 3 SSD that was formatted by windows 10 during install as a MBR volume to a NVMe drive which is GPT so it's bootable.

If so would Macrium Reflect work and is there any specific settings necessary?

 

[corkyg]

AFAIK the clone would be a bit by bit duplicate and be MBR.

 

[thecoolnessrune]

If you are using this on a Windows 10 Installation that's at least release 1703 (April 2017) or higher, you can perform this conversion with Microsoft's MBR2GPT application. There's information about using the little program here: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/deployment/mbr-to-gpt

After conversion, you would then have the necessary GPT Partition and UEFI information. As noted in the document, it's important to make sure your system can be configured to use UEFI mode before converting. If you can use NVMe disks in your system however, it's safe to say you have UEFI.

 

[cmdrdredd]

If you are using this on a Windows 10 Installation that's at least release 1703 (April 2017) or higher, you can perform this conversion with Microsoft's MBR2GPT application. There's information about using the little program here: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/deployment/mbr-to-gpt

After conversion, you would then have the necessary GPT Partition and UEFI information. As noted in the document, it's important to make sure your system can be configured to use UEFI mode before converting. If you can use NVMe disks in your system however, it's safe to say you have UEFI.

Ok but if I were cloning the OS disk does this still work properly?

 

[thecoolnessrune]

Explain what you mean. The idea is that you go ahead and move your disk to GPT + UEFI Before you clone the OS Disk, not after. You should then be able to clone the disk to your NVMe disk. That noted, I recommend running the application from a separate installation, so that the old MBR Partition is recycled and no longer present. You could use Windows PE from a USB Drive, or install a fresh install to a different hard drive and use that installation to run the application on this SSD.

 

[cmdrdredd]

Worked fine but here's what I did. Format new drive as GPT and then image my MBR drive to using Reflect. Then using the recovery disk made from Reflect I restored that image to the new SSD and had it fix the boot files and EFI partition (it does this automatically through a built in tool). Then I formatted my old drive. Booted from the new drive no problem.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

I'm always recommending Macrium based on my personal experience, but your account seems like a new one to me. The bootable recovery disc seems to contain unknown wonders. I was just pleased that it would reliably repair a (dual-boot) boot record whenever necessary.

I made my MBR-to-GPT conversion first on the SATA disk and tweaked the BIOS for UEFI; then installed the NVME and its driver; and finally cloned the SATA (two OS volumes) to the NVME. Nice to know that there are options for deviating from that recipe.

 

[cmdrdredd]

I'm always recommending Macrium based on my personal experience, but your account seems like a new one to me. The bootable recovery disc seems to contain unknown wonders. I was just pleased that it would reliably repair a (dual-boot) boot record whenever necessary.

I made my MBR-to-GPT conversion first on the SATA disk and tweaked the BIOS for UEFI; then installed the NVME and its driver; and finally cloned the SATA (two OS volumes) to the NVME. Nice to know that there are options for deviating from that recipe.

The key thing was to only restore the C partition, not the MBR/boot partition.