Cloning a MBR ssd to GPT ssd

[Niami]

I'm considering buying a new m.2 ssd for boot and programs and keep my current ssd as fast storage for my main games. I also recently noticed I've been running in legacy bios on my ssd and I want have my new ssd in GPT so I can use UEFI bios mode. Would it be possible to have the new ssd in GPT and still be able to clone the data to it from a MBR ssd?

[Kisai]

2 minutes ago, Niami said:

I'm considering buying a new m.2 ssd for boot and programs and keep my current ssd as fast storage for my main games. I also recently noticed I've been running in legacy bios on my ssd and I want have my new ssd in GPT so I can use UEFI bios mode. Would it be possible to have the new ssd in GPT and still be able to clone the data to it from a MBR ssd?

Just switch to GPT and then clone the drive. 

 

Run cmd.exe with admin privileges in Win 10:

mbr2gpt /convert /allowfullos

Then reboot and switch to UEFI mode. Done.

 

Something like this can be used then:

https://www.macrium.com/reflectfree

[SSD Sean]

It seems like you can convert MBR OS drives to GPT: http://reflect.macrium.com/help/v5/How_to/Conversions/Convert_an_MBR_disk_to_a_GPT_disk.htm 

Make sure you back up first! Make a system image at minimum. 

 

Personally, I haven't done it on an OS drive. Just a secondary years ago. I'd just do a clean install and drag n drop the files you need or use something like freefilesync to do it as a batch job.

[Niami]

3 minutes ago, Kisai said:

Just switch to GPT and then clone the drive. 

 

Run cmd.exe with admin privileges in Win 10:

mbr2gpt /convert /allowfullos

Then reboot and switch to UEFI mode. Done.

 

Something like this can be used then:

https://www.macrium.com/reflectfree

would it be better to clone then run mbr2gpt on the new ssd running from the old ssd as I've read that it's not a good idea converting the drive your running os from?

[Kisai]

7 minutes ago, Niami said:

would it be better to clone then run mbr2gpt on the new ssd running from the old ssd as I've read that it's not a good idea converting the drive your running os from?

You can do it either way, just keep in mind that you have to be able to boot the drive.

 

I've not run into any failure conditions with mbr2gpt yet. The main obstacle here would be getting the UEFI bios to boot the right drive, which the easiest way is to remove the previous drive for one boot cycle, and point the UEFI to the drive itself, not the boot manager, once it boots correctly once, put the other drive back in.