65
votes
Accepted
Converting between GPT and MBR hard drive without losing data
You can convert from GPT to MBR and MBR to GPT without data loss (I have tried that) with gdisk in Linux.
Use at your own risk
Run command gdisk /dev/sdx with sdx as per your HDD partition
GPT ...
48
votes
Mac OS X This Disk doesn't use the GUID partition Scheme when upgrading to Mac OS Sierra
In Disk Utility, near the close/minimize/fullscreen buttons, you can see a "View" mode dropdown menu. Set the view mode to "Show All Devices", then you'll see the "root" drives. Click on a root drive, ...
40
votes
How to add Windows 10 to grub boot loader?
Boot to your Linux
Open a Terminal window
Type: sudo os-prober
If the results identify a Windows 10 install, type sudo update-grub which will update the GRUB entries and add it
Reboot your computer ...
37
votes
Accepted
Are GPT partitions less likely to get corrupted than MBR-based partitions?
According to Wikipedia, there is redundancy in the GPT scheme. The GPT table is written at the beginning of the disk, as well as at the end of the disk (see image). In addition each GPT table has a ...
32
votes
Accepted
Why doesn't installing GRUB on MBR destroy the partition table?
The software reads the original sector; updates it in memory; then writes out the updated sector.
On Linux, this is actually done by the OS itself, so GRUB doesn't need to worry about sectors – it can ...
21
votes
How to fix the Windows 10 boot loader from Windows
The other answers given here work great on MBR/BIOS systems, however if you're on a UEFI system like I am, bootsect will just write a semi-functional boot MBR over the GPT protective MBR and bootrec ...
16
votes
Accepted
What are all those partition table type in gparted?
What are those available partition table types in gparted useful for?
The options you mention (other than Atari) are covered below (and I guess Atari is there to support Atari partition tables).
...
15
votes
Accepted
MBR or GPT for external backup drive
GPT is much more resilient against data corruption because of the CRC
and because it stores multiple copies of the partitioning and boot data,
so recovery is still possible after a catastrophic data ...
14
votes
Cloned disk - duplicate disk signature, how to resolve?
You should be able to fix colliding disk signatures with the diskpart command line utility that comes with Windows. It allows you to view and change the disk signature.
Open a command prompt (cmd....
13
votes
How can I solve this MBR2GPT issue?
To clarify @merle 's VERY helpful answer - I had to run the command below to copy my working EFI boot data to a place where mbr2gpt could find it.
bcdboot c:\Windows /f bios /s c:
Once you've done ...
13
votes
Accepted
If my motherboard does not support UEFI BIOS, can I still use GPT for non boot drives?
Non-boot GPT disks are supported on BIOS-only systems
It is not necessary to boot from UEFI in order to utilize disks partitioned with the GPT partition scheme. Therefore you can take advantage of all ...
12
votes
Accepted
Clonezilla fails at cloning with mismatched GPT and MBR partition
Important - Kindly Note
Kindly request you to go through @Tetsujin's comment below. When he tried the same answer, there was data loss. So, I assume this answer is no longer fully correct. Hence ...
11
votes
Accepted
What is a "UEFI-bootable" USB flash drive and can I boot it on legacy BIOS?
Most UEFI implementations can also boot from MBR-partitioned USB drives. They expect a file at /efi/boot/bootx64.efi to exist. For best compatibility, using the FAT32 filesystem is highly recommended.
...
11
votes
Converting between GPT and MBR hard drive without losing data
Making your drive bootable
This is an enhancement to the information provided by Krunal and clarkttfu with more details on the steps to create a BIOS boot partition and install grub to it.
If you ...
10
votes
Accepted
In Linux, how do you delete the partition table from a disk?
You can just write some zeros to the first sector of the disk in question, for example you want to erase partition table of sda:
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda bs=512 count=1
That would fill first ...
10
votes
Accepted
How can I migrate a Windows 10 from BIOS/MBR boot to UEFI/GPT without reinstalling?
Starting with Windows 10 Version 1703 (Creators Update, Build 15063), there is a tool called MBR2GPT.EXE included which does all steps.
Best is to boot from a Win10 v1703 DVD/USB drive to the repair ...
10
votes
If my motherboard does not support UEFI BIOS, can I still use GPT for non boot drives?
Although Twisty’s answer somewhat hints at it, I’ll spell it out: BIOS does it all.
In fact, GPT or MBR don’t matter at all. The BIOS will simply load the first sector of the HDD/SDD into RAM and ...
10
votes
Making sense of the 2TB MBR partition limit
Is the 2TiB limit a partition limitation, or a total disk/volume limitation? If it's the former, is it possible to increase the usable space of a disk by creating further partitions less than 2TiB on ...
8
votes
How to partition MBR external hdd on Mac?
You can use Terminal
diskutil partitionDisk /dev/disk7 MBR fat32 "NO NAME" 100%
Replace number 7 on "disk7" with actual disk number..
GPT: GUID Partition Table
APM: Apple Partition Map
MBR: Master ...
8
votes
Accepted
Can I chainload MBR from Grub on secondary GPT drive? And can I nuke MSR on secondary drive?
My problems stemmed from confusion and lack of knowledge. I will try to summarise what I've learned here in the hope that some one finds it useful.
BIOS vs UEFI Hardware
When your power on your ...
8
votes
Cloned disk - duplicate disk signature, how to resolve?
As @Interminable said in the comment to the other answer, the solution for me was to just right-click on the offline disk and select 'Online'.
8
votes
Accepted
How to fix a partition detected as RAW, when Chkdsk correctly reads it as NTFS?
In the end, after I used TestDisk to copy all the important files off the disk, I finally risked running chkdsk /f and it didn't detect any problems, but apparently removed the "requires checking" ...
8
votes
Accepted
Cannot convert from MBR to GPT
Hidden just means that the OS won't mount those partitions automatically. It isn't related to the success or failure of the conversion, since it's just a different value in the partition type field, ...
8
votes
Is is safe to copy a partition bitwise between MBR and GPT partition tables?
There’s none. Neither MBR nor GPT deal with what’s inside partitions. You can clone a partition from MBR to GPT and vice versa and still access all the data normally. While staying within limits (like ...
7
votes
Accepted
How can a MBR formatted hard drive exceed 1.81 TiB capacity?
Your USB drive presents itself to the host computer with a logical sector size of 4096 bytes, and that's what enables it to be partitioned with an MBR partition table that can use more than 2 TB of ...
7
votes
Accepted
Why does a GPT formatted disk have the MBR? Protective MBR
Legacy tools will simply 'see' a partition in legacy partition table (MBR) occupying the entire disk and as such the partition (hopefully) 'protects' the drive from new and overlapping partitions ...
6
votes
How can I solve this MBR2GPT issue?
I have tried all of the mentioned solutions, but none of them worked for me. However, I found out what was the main reason for the problem and solved it.
When I ran diskpart and saw the details of ...
6
votes
Accepted
HDD appears to have both MBR and GPT
gdisk (“GPT fdisk”) has a one-step(-ish) option to create a protective MBR.
$ gdisk /dev/sdb
x
n
w
This will:
Launch gdisk
Enter expert mode
“create a new protective MBR”
“write table to disk and ...
6
votes
Accepted
What is the maximum size of hard-drive used MBR partitioning?
However, it seems that the Partition size is limited by the 32bit size of capacity field in the partition table. This is (2^32)-1 x 512 byte = 2TB.
Basically yes, if the sector size is 512 bytes.
...
6
votes
Accepted
What is the best way to move MBR and bootmgr to new drive (Windows 10)?
The 'bcdboot' tool is enough. (It is even possible to install Windows with only 'dism' and 'bcdboot'.)
For BIOS mode:
Create or choose the 'system' partition – an NTFS partition that'll hold the ...
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