How to Clone MBR Disk to GPT Disk/SSD
How do I clone MBR disk to GPT SSD?
"My current 2TB computer hard drive was dying, so I bought a replacement 3TB SSD which requires GPT partitioning. Now, I want to move the entire contents of my old drive to this new drive keep it bootable. Is there any way that allows me to clone the MBR partitioned drive to a GPT partitioned SSD?"
Three Steps to Clone MBR to GPT Without Boot Issue
When your old hard drive is full, you may want to upgrade system disk or replace it with a newer or larger HDD or SSD to get better performance. You Only need three steps to clone MBR to GPT without boot issue.
1 - Convert the GPT to MBR
Many users want to clone disk from MBR to GPT, for the advantages of GPT disks. Nowadays, hard disk drives are getting more capacity, and disks beyond 2 TB are often used in building computers, so many large hard drives or SSDs are initialized as GPT disk by default for making full use of the free disk space on a large drive.
However, you cannot clone MBR to GPT because the cloned disk cannot boot. If you want to clone the MBR disk to the GPT disk you must convert the GPT to MBR first.
2 - Clone the MBR to the "GPT" Disk
After you have converted the GPT disk to MBR, you are able to clone the old MBR to the new "GPT"(It has become MBR) disk. A third-party disk clone software - Qiling Backup can help you do it by cloning HDD to SSD or new HDD.
But in some special situations, for example, your old hard drive is an MBR partitioned boot disk and your new HDD or SSD is GPT partitioned disk, in this case, you will be required to clone MBR disk to GPT disk or SSD. It is a little bit difficult to manage the job as a bootable issue will happen in high chances if you simply clone MBR HDD to HDD or SSD with GPT partition table. Do remember to convert the GPT to MBR first and start the cloning process.
Step 1. Connect the HDD and the SSD to your PC, launch Qiling cloning software and click "Clone".
Step 2. It will show the next window and choose the source disk partition (here the MBR ) you want to clone. And then click "Next" to continue.
Tick "Sector by sector clone" option, it will clone all sectors from the source disk to the destination disk including your system data.
Step 3. Choose the destination disk.
Step 4. You are allowed to preview the disk layout in advance, then click "Proceed" to start the clone.
Tick Optimize for SSD, it will optimize the new SSD performance.
3 - Convert the "GPT" Disk to GPT Again
After you have successfully cloned the old MBR disk to the "GPT" disk, restart your PC and boot from the "GPT" disk.
Very Important:
To make sure that you don't have any booting problem before you convert the MBR to GPT, you must know the following things:
- Your operating system is 64-bit.
- Your computer allows UEFI mode.
- Change boot mode to UEFI before booting from GPT disk.
After you have known the notices, you can then convert the MBR disk to GPT. Before you can boot from this GPT disk, you need to boot into BIOS and change legacy to UEFI boot mode. /p>
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