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I have an existing Windows 7 64-bit boot partition on a 3 TB hard drive, which is an MBR disk. My BIOS is definitely a UEFI BIOS. The motherboard is a Asrock Z77E-ITX (see http://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/Z77E-ITX/) and I've updated it to the latest BIOS.

I'd like to create a single partition which is 3 TB in size while still

  • maintaining all the same content in the boot partition
  • being able to boot from the partition

Having a partition > 2 TB requires a GPT disk from what I've researched, but conversion from MBR to GPT apparently makes the boot partition unbootable? Is there a way to convert it to GPT without losing the ability to boot from the drive?

I can't seem to be able to find a single, straightforward answer to this. Is there a tool somewhere that can do this?

masotime
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2 Answers2

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The trick is maintaining bootability. Basically, you'll need to convert from MBR to GPT with gdisk and then install an EFI-mode boot loader for Windows. This page describes the process. Note that it's not risk-free, so be prepared to undo everything and recover or re-install Windows if things go south.

Rod Smith
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I guess, yes there's some tools : gdisk, DISKPART (etc). Also, it's seem that you'll find that you looking for with them. According to this.

PS : I can't do more (give feedback). I just recently discover the existence of those tools.

Community
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Wagner_SOFC
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  • Thanks for responding. I also came across something similar at http://serverfault.com/questions/301249/convert-mbr-to-gpt-partition-format - I'm just wondering if anyone has tried it on a bootable partition and checked if the partition remained bootable and if not, if it was possible to make it bootable. – masotime Dec 22 '13 at 14:47