GPT

[pegasis]

I have a spare drive that is 2TB with MBR, and i am testing converting it to GPT

It has data on it, and I am converting it to GPT with it in a spare HD bay.

I converted it to GPT using paragon hard drive clone, but now it will not boot and windows 10 OS won't recognize it as a HD

what went wrong?

can I use dos to convert an mbr drive to gpt?

 

[pegasis]

this drive was recently upgraded to win10, and for some reason now it has a new 450MB partition

it shows the 450mb partition is not active, so I am perplexed as to what it has, or is for??

is there a windows tool to resize partitions?

I tried again to convert the drive to gpt,
I deleted all the previous partitions, and formated it, then used dos gpt to try

and it seemed to work, but added a 128MB partition, and now I am trying to
copy the partitions from the main drive and there is no room

 

[ch33zw1z]

So what were you trying to do by converting to GPT?

Once you started, I'm not sure where it will land ya.

my advice is stop, and try to remember if there's specific data you need to keep.

If so, don't touch anything else, and use something like this: https://gparted.org/livecd.php

That can boot "live" linux and review the partitions, if you need to recover data, boot with two drives so you have somewhere to copy data.

In the future, plan to run an OS (operating system drive), and keep data on a separate drive

 

[pegasis]

I currently don't want OS and data on separate drive, makes cloning drive harder.
cloning drives is very simple

I have separate partitions for OS, and data on a linux drive, and it is a real pain.


this drive is windows, and it is only 2TB, need to convert it to gpt to transfer to 5TB

gparted is on linux mint live USB, and I have used it to clone/copy partitions, but the boot sector is the issue

how would I put the boot loader onto a windows drive using Gparted?

 

[Ketchup]

If you are big into cloning, back up you data, wipe the MBR partition, make a GPT partition with Windows or the program of your choice, then do a fresh install of Windows in that drive.

FWIW, you won't gain much going GPT over MBR on a 2 tb drive.

 

[ch33zw1z]

Yea, either use the windows 10 install media to try and repair the install, or install and restore you data.

 

[bononos]

this drive was recently upgraded to win10, and for some reason now it has a new 450MB partition

it shows the 450mb partition is not active, so I am perplexed as to what it has, or is for??

is there a windows tool to resize partitions?
.......

There are quite a few freemium utilities can can resize partitions. Partition Wizard or Partition expert are popular and have decent support from the user community.
The 450Mb is a recovery partition for Win10 (Win7 is 100Mb, Win8 is 200Mb) which will be created automatically and unfortunately windows will just keep adding recovery partitions instead of consolidating them if you don't clear your disk when you install the OS.

 

[pegasis]

I really don't wish to repair, reinstall windows?

will this for with a upgrade from windows 8,1?

I have added GPT to the drive, but it still will not boot

 

[Ketchup]

GPT isn't something to be "adeed" to a drive, like a utility. It is a complete restructuring of partition table, and I would question any program that says it can do otherwise. Even Microsoft tutorials will give you this caution.

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc725671(v=ws.11).aspx

 

[pegasis]

I have already added it whatever, restructured

It says GPT so it is there, but the drive won't boot

I have added it after wiping all the existing volumes, and then copyed the partitions from the master drive.

the volumes look correct, and the drive is listed as gpt, but still after two attempts it won't boot?

 

[bbhaag]

GPT isn't something to be "adeed" to a drive, like a utility. It is a complete restructuring of partition table, and I would question any program that says it can do otherwise. Even Microsoft tutorials will give you this caution.

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc725671(v=ws.11).aspx

With Windows10s spring update it appears to be a lot easier. I'm even considering trying to convert my main OS drive that is mbr over to gpt. If this tutorial is any indication converting isn't what it used to be at least if you're on Win10. https://www.windowscentral.com/how-convert-mbr-disk-gpt-move-bios-uefi-windows-10

To the op have you tried enabling uefi boot in your bios? I don't know if it is necessary but it might be worth a try.

 

[Ketchup]

I have already added it whatever, restructured

It says GPT so it is there, but the drive won't boot

I have added it after wiping all the existing volumes, and then copyed the partitions from the master drive.

the volumes look correct, and the drive is listed as gpt, but still after two attempts it won't boot?

So what is the default entry in your boot loader right now?

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/drivers/devtest/changing-the-default-boot-entry