Another Friday night computer question

Me | 6/25/2023 | Paul R.

[Colo9250]

Hold on there, is the new 500gb going to be your boot drive? If so you need the MBR because that stands for “Master Boot Record”. Without the MBR your system will fail to start.

If this is NOT your boot drive then go with GPT.

I have a Lenovo Desktop that has the M.2 (1tb) as drive 0 and the system boots from there and contains all of Win 11. My second drive is also 1tb and is a SSD that is drive 1 for data only.

Hope this helps.

[logi_cal869]

I feel your pain, having walked away from IT (I apparently have a low tolerance for users who comprise a majority of the cause of work).

I remain wary/unconvinced as to the integrity of SSD, let alone NVMe (for reasons I can’t go into here), but concede I’ve been out of the game for a bit. I hope the need for the transition qualifies the angst.

I am extremely frustrated by the lack of manufacturer support for different hardware configurations, including adequate memory slots & bios. A drive swap & migration shouldn’t be so maddening. Best of luck.

[Paul R.]

The idea is for the machine to boot under UEFI, the “modern” successor to BIOS.

(UEFI actually goes back to 2006 with its development going back to at least 1998. See:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UEFI

Yeah, I’m a little behind the times...)

This is the 1st time I’ve tried to set up a machine for UEFI instead of using BIOS. I sort of stumbled into it backards because my new SSD is GPT. But, at least I’ll finally get past 2006 if I get this solved...

[Paul R.]

Ah!

AH!

AH-HA!!!

This may be the answer, under: “Why you should convert your drive” and the paragraph just above —

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/manufacture/desktop/windows-setup-installing-using-the-mbr-or-gpt-partition-style?view=windows-11

“You can preserve your data and convert the drive using the MBR2GPT tool, or you can choose to reformat the drive using the instructions below. Reformatting will erase all the data on the drive.”

And that MBR2GPT tool is at:

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/deployment/mbr-to-gpt

SO... It looks like I should make an up to date recovery drive which brings up yet ANOTHER question (I will start a new thread for that.)

Then I’ll convert the existing SATA boot drive to GPT. If that goes well, my guess is that Acronis will then clone to the M.2 NVME drive without issue.

Good Lord, nobody explains this stuff in the 1st place when you receive your new drive...???!!! C’mon Crucial.com...

“

[Paul R.]

BTW, I added the new disk as a “New Disk” using Acronis and now it shows up (everywhere it can be detected) as Disk (E:) and both Windows and Acronis show it as “GPT”. BUT, when I go to make the clone ACRONIS insists it must make a totally exact clone and will convert the new / target M.2 SSD to MBR.

So, that’s where my post previous to this one comes into play, evidently...

[minnesota_bound]

When you open Disk Management by right clicking on the Start button then clicking on Disk Management you can right click on the Disk 0 or the other drives to the left side then go to Properties. Next click on Volumes tab.

Is your original drive MBR or GPT?
Also does your BIOS support UEFI?
How old is the pc?

See: MBR or GPT for SSD, Which Is Better and How to Choose?
https://www.easeus.com/partition-master/mbr-or-gpt-for-ssd.html

How to Convert MBR to GPT or GPT to MBR Without Losing Data in Windows 11/10/8/7
https://www.easeus.com/partition-manager-software/convert-mbr-to-gpt-gpt-to-mbr-using-cmd-without-losing-data.html

My 2TB Samsung ssd is MBR while my 8TB hard drive shows GPT.
My pc is from 2015.

[Paul R.]

Right, did that early on, as previously noted the original (boot) drive is MBR, the new NVME drive is GPT.

Yeah, next step is back to the BIOS again to see if UEFI is an option. (I think it is, but not sure.)

March, 2016.

[Paul R.]

Yeah, this hunting around for piecemeal info. is for the birds...