Converting a disc with multiple partitions (NTFS/EXT4) from MBR to GPT

[Bitter]

I see there's tools for doing Windows discs from MBR to GPT and there's tools for doing EXT4 discs, but what if I have both kinds of partition on a single disc? Do I just run their own tools separately and do each partition it's own way one at a time? Data is backed up, I'm working on a cloned disc so if I screw something up irretrievably I can just re-clone it.

[whispous]

If it's cloned, just wipe it and re-make the partitions?

[BobVonBob]

Converting the disk to GPT converts the whole disk. You don't need to do it separately for each partition, even if they have different file systems. I'd suggest using Linux to do the conversion since it tends to be more considerate of Windows than the other way around, but with how the conversion works Microsoft's mbr2gpt would probably be fine anyway.

[Bitter]

1 hour ago, BobVonBob said:

Converting the disk to GPT converts the whole disk. You don't need to do it separately for each partition, even if they have different file systems. I'd suggest using Linux to do the conversion since it tends to be more considerate of Windows than the other way around, but with how the conversion works Microsoft's mbr2gpt would probably be fine anyway.

That makes a lot of sense, I've only done single partition discs prior and kind of had a smooth brain moment about multiple partitions. Google, as increasingly is the case, have useless results.

[Bitter]

On 12/10/2022 at 10:37 AM, whispous said:

If it's cloned, just wipe it and re-make the partitions?

If you wipe a cloned drive you have a blank drive again?? I'm exceedingly lazy and have things set just how I like them and want to just drop my laptop life into a new body. I only fresh install Linux every few new versions.

[Bitter]

On 12/10/2022 at 10:51 AM, BobVonBob said:

Converting the disk to GPT converts the whole disk. You don't need to do it separately for each partition, even if they have different file systems. I'd suggest using Linux to do the conversion since it tends to be more considerate of Windows than the other way around, but with how the conversion works Microsoft's mbr2gpt would probably be fine anyway.

So the directions I'm finding for gdisk are a bit confusing.  Telling me to do some things which some comments say will wipe the disk of partitions or pointing at the wrong option selection because the directions are 10yrs old. Mbr2gpt is giving me a failed to retrieve geometry for disk error. Do I need to nuke the old Window 7 install first to use mbr2gpt? I don't care about breaking GRUB cause I was just going to boot up a live Boot-Repair session and run that to fix after converting. 

 

I've used mbr2gpt twice before without issues on Windows 10 installs. I haven't used gdisk before.

 

I cleared about 630MB of free space at the start of the disc for whatever needs to be written there.

[Herr.Hoefkens]

not a windows answer but, GPT-Fdisk (gdisk) can do that for you without any fuzz , or risk for dataloss ...

https://sourceforge.net/projects/gptfdisk/

if im not mistaken its included (allong with some other tools one might like) on this live usb:

https://www.supergrubdisk.org/rescatux/

if not there's any linx live/install usb , wich also inludes it 99/100 or any of these:

https://www.ultimatebootcd.com/

https://www.system-rescue.org/

 

[Bitter]

1 minute ago, Herr.Hoefkens said:

not a windows answer but, GPT-Fdisk (gdisk) can do that for you without any fuzz , or risk for dataloss ...

https://sourceforge.net/projects/gptfdisk/

if im not mistaken its included (allong with some other tools one might like) on this live usb:

https://www.supergrubdisk.org/rescatux/

if not there's any linx live/install usb , wich also inludes it 99/100 or any of these:

https://www.ultimatebootcd.com/

https://www.system-rescue.org/

 

Gdisk would work fine too! I'm just bumping in outdated how-to and inconsistent directions regarding data loss. Data is all backed up but I'd rather not spend a few hours cloning the disk again if I don't have to do it.

[Herr.Hoefkens]

if you are not sure on  what to do and like to try first:

use a usbstick format it as mbr (cfdisk,parted, gparted ...) , add a partition or two , format them fat32 dump some files on that

then attempt to convert it  and verify in any (osx, or linux, (no windows as windows cannot see a second partition on a usb most of the time)) other pc and see if all data is still acceesible on the stick,... an mp4 clip is a good indicator (sizable and corrupts really easy so)(

[Bitter]

1 hour ago, Herr.Hoefkens said:

if you are not sure on  what to do and like to try first:

use a usbstick format it as mbr (cfdisk,parted, gparted ...) , add a partition or two , format them fat32 dump some files on that

then attempt to convert it  and verify in any (osx, or linux, (no windows as windows cannot see a second partition on a usb most of the time)) other pc and see if all data is still acceesible on the stick,... an mp4 clip is a good indicator (sizable and corrupts really easy so)(

That's an excellent idea. I have a few spare PC's laying around I can do that with more easily than the laptop I'm working with. Honestly, I'm not a dumb guy I'm just not the most brilliant at this. Thank you!

[Bitter]

I haven't had much time to dig into this but I was thinking about it the other day. Could I just make a GPT disk on the NVME drive then copy JUST the partitions to the drive, update GRUB (or run a boot-repair live session and let that fix it for me), then have this working? If it's that simple then I'm going to just kick myself for trying to do this the hard way.

 

I think some of my difficulty may be the fact that I've got more than 4 partitions on a MBR disk using a container partition for 3 for Ubuntu (OS, data, and swap) then Windows and I think a left over recovery partition for Windows or something else Windows related for a total of 5. I think that's why mbr2gpt fails, too many things going on and it's just like 'nope' and could be some of my difficulty with gdisk as well. Obviously as GPT I wouldn't need the 3 Ubuntu partitions in the container partition which greatly simplifies things.

[Bitter]

After some free time and stumbling around I've gotten somewhere. I formatted a disk GPT, copied the partitions over to it, created an efi boot partition and some free space at the beginning of the disk, then was able to get boot-repair booted up and got GRUB sorted out to the point where my Xubuntu boots. Windows isn't showing up for update-grub or os-prober but I think that's cause it's such an old Win7 install it's in BIOS not EFI. I don't mind copying my data off and doing a fresh Win10 install there then re-fixing GRUB again to get it booting. I think I'll go ahead and clone this over to the NVME drive and see if that still boots up then I'll copy whatever data I need off the Win7 partition, then do a Win10 install in the laptop so it grabs the product key correctly during install, boot-repair, and I ***should*** be golden. I hope.