Convert Boot Drive From MBR To GPT Without Data Loss
Dec 27, 2015
I am currently trying to convert my mSATA SSD from MBR to GPT. I have downloaded EaseUS partition master and can see that I can convert the disk using the software. My question is however if this is possible to do with my mSATA drive that my PC boots from and has Windows 10 installed or does it have to be a drive that is not booted from. I know there are lots of threads on this however none specify of this is possible using the drive you are booted from.
When I try to boot from a recovery flash drive, it fails with: EFIMicrosoftBootBCD error status: 0xc000000f and message: The Boot Configuration Data for your PC is missing or contains errors.
The recovery flash drive was created on a Lenovo ideapad originally with Windows 8, now upgraded to Windows 10, latest upgrades applied. Checked the box for copying system files. Target drive was a 16GB DataTraveler flash drive formatted as FAT32. Creation ran to completion with no errors. When booting normally, Windows 10 runs fine with no issues. I tried re-creating the recovery drive with the same results.
I created a repair disk and tried to use bootrec to fix the issue, but I suspect it did nothing or fixed the c: drive. I ran boot rec while in the root directory on the flash drive.
After several weeks of testing I'm ready to go full on Windows 10 and want to get rid of Windows 7 but I have some partitioning issues I want to clean up. I currently have Windows 7 on drive 0 (360 GB) and Windows 10 on drive 1 (500 GB). Both are SATA drives and RAID is enabled in the bios but not active.
What I think I'd like to do is simply swap the drives physically so that Drive 0 has my current Windows 10 install on it and make it primary boot active etc. The drive with Windows 7 on it would become drive 1 and I would delete the Windows 7 partition and re-partition it with a clean empty partition just for extra space.
Second question, any advantage to using this drive configuration in a RAID setup?
So I recently bought a ssd to add to my pc so that I could add my OS and some other files on to the ssd and keep my old hdd as storage. After finally getting the OS onto the ssd and being able to boot from it I tried to transfer all of the files back to the original hdd from the backup I had made from the ssd after cloning the drive. Once completed the hdd was no longer showing up at all in my computer so I went into disk management and tried to set a path for it, but it was now split into two partitions (I am assuming because I took the backed up ssd and put it onto a hdd because the size of one of the partitions is the size of the ssd). I tried formatting both partitions and then extending it to combine them but whenever I do this it tells me there is not enough space on the disk to complete the operation.
I have a 120 gig solid state hard drive, that I have my OS installed on (Windows 10)
I was going to install windows 7 on a second partition on that hard drive, so I shrank the current partition and it gave me unallocated space.
I had a few people tell me it wasn't possible to install windows 7 on the same hard drive as windows 10... for some reason or another.
So I decided to expand the partition back to its original size (the whole hard drive).
Before I shrunk the partition.. I had 60 gigs left, I shrunk it by 20 to install windows 7 on.
Well after some people told me it wouldn't work. I decide to re-expand the partition to take back up the whole drive.
Problem is, when I did that.. I loss that 20 gigs, it says that 20 gigs is 'used' space now. I tried scanning the hard drive for errors and defragging (won't let me defrag that drive.. I assume cause its either a solid state drive or the windows drive)
What is the MapData folder which has recently appeared on my D drive? (This is the drive containing all my user folders with the exception of Pictures.) It contains subfolders diskcache, mapscache and files overrides.json, updater.nma
There was a folder titled Windows.000 that was created after my previous upgrade to windows 10. This folder had all of my data on it and now it has completely disappeared. It feels like somebody has physically come into my home and gutted my hard drive. My C: properties say 1.9GB Free out of 2... WTF??
Wondering how Windows 10 deals with putting data on a separate partition or drive. Does it use the same general method as in Windows 7, where it re-maps (for example) "Documents" to a folder on a different letter drive path? So that C:Users{user}Documents becomes G:Users{user}Documents?
I'm hoping that it actually becomes more like *nix, using symbolic links to point to the right place (so C:Users{user}Documents points to the separate partition of drive). Personally, I find the Win7 method to be clunky and problematic in actual use.
One of my WD Green 2tb drives has become raw and can't be used. Windows will not complete a format of it. Shows up in my computer. Is there any way of saving this drive?
So when I decided to build this pc, i wanted it to have Win7. When i booted it up, i kept getting the message asking if i wanted to upgrade to Win10. so i thought "hey, i paid 50 dollars for win7, so why don't i upgrade to win10 for free instead of paying 100 dollars," so i did. and all of my downloads and files, everything, saved so i didn't have to download everything again. but turns out i don't like win10. so if i go back to win7, will everything stay on my hard drive?
I just bought a new computer and it comes with Win 10. I need to plug in my old hard drive with all my installed programs and data (Win 7) and moved them to that new drive (Win 10). Is there a software that you would recommend for this and what should be done? Clone or image? I am lost in terminology!
I use a 2 drive set up, a small solid state for my operating system and whatever game I'm currently into, and a 2TB storage drive.
My storage drive (D:) bombed and I took it in for data recovery. The tech saved about 1.3TB of 1.6 used. He put the image onto my new drive and got it going again. However when I try to access explorer or anything pertaining to D: it hangs for about 45 seconds before giving me access. I ran CCleaner first off to knock out registry entries that lost their home but haven't seen any improvement.
What else should I do to get this thing back in order? I'm on Windows 10.
In my desktop I have two hard disks ( disk 0 and disk 1 ) . Disk 1 is a clone of disk 0 created by Macrium Reflect Disk 0 : ( C: ) windows 10 pro , upgrade from windows 7 , ( E: ) windows 8.1 pro , ( G: ) Storage partition Disk 1 : clone of disk 0
problem description : I see in msconfig / boot a wrong listing
windows 10 ( C:WINDOWS) : Current OS ; Default OS
windows 8.1 pro ( H:WINDOWS ) instead of ( E:WINDOWS )
Nevertheless the dual booting works fine as well as the shift between the disks via BIOS.
The question is , could I fix the situation using the EasyBCD of Neosmart Technologies to edit the bootloader ?
I see can change drive letter H: to E: and save the change , am I right or wrong ? or any other way ....
I have a legacy 64 bit dual core desktop (ASUS mobo). I have several Sata hard drives in it with the 4th partition of my 1 Terabyte drive containing my Windows 10 Professional boot OS. After converting another similar legacy machine to a NAS device I took the old Windows 10 32 bit OS drive from it and tried booting the ASUS machine with it. Needless to say, the OS didn't like it and reverted to Windows 10 Pro Insider Preview edition (build 11082).
When I tried to restore the boot drive to the original one for this machine the master boot was missing.
I had just formatted another partition on the same drive that had contained a Windows7 installation that had failed. This partition may have contained the master boot record. So I booted to a command prompt from a USB drive and successfully ran the following commands:
bootrec /RebuildBcdbootrec /fixMbr bootrec /fixboot bootsect /nt60 SYSbootsect /nt60 all
After that the BIOS just says "An operating system wasn't found. Try disconnecting any drives that don't contain an operating system" This disk and OS are on the original machine it used to run on. As I understand it, Windows 10 tries to record it's key to somewhere in the BIOS. But the BIOS on these old machines don't provide such a facility. I don't understand what Windows 10 OS does with the key in this instance. If it was recorded in the BIOS then I'd presume that the other Windows 10 drive I attempted to use would have found it and used it. Or perhaps not, since it didn't like the new environment.
what I'm looking for is a way to get my original Windows 10 to boot again on the same machine it had always work on before, from the 4th partition of the 1 terabyte drive I'm using.
I wasn't sure which forum to put this into. I created a backup image on a usb hard drive. I wanted to be able to restore it using a usb recovery thumb drive. I used the create usb recovery tool and created the recovery flash drive. When I try to boot from the flash drive I get an error saying that the boot configuration data is missing or contains errors. I can boot up the laptop using the current windows install so it isn't referring to the hard drive. I have tried several usb drives and get the same message on each. Here is a screenshot of the message.
My laptop doesn't boot because OS is on E: drive instead of C: drive
When I try to boot it up (it somehow boots up as windows 8.1 instead of my OS windows 10), it gives a BSoD and shows the error code 0xc000021a. I created a bootable USB drive with windows 10 pro on it, but it shows my OS as windows 8.1 instead of 10, and it doesn't allow me to restore or do a startup repair, because they both fail.
Some weeks ago I converted to win10, I did not like it so I reverted to win 7.I like windows media centre which I use a lot. I also found in win 10 that my home movies which are mod files did not convert properly ie the thumbnails did not show what the content was.The upshot is that I lose on the conversion.I read recently that Msoft are going to force convert in the future and I do not want that to happen.What do I have to do to get them to respect my wishes?
I recently purchased a Samsung M3 slimline 1TB hard drive to backup and create a system image of my PC onto. I plugged it in and it installed all the necessary device driver software however when I go to create a system image or backup I get this message:
Windows Backup skipped backing up system image because one of the critical volumes cannot be included for backup. Check that volume is online and is formatted NTFS.
After going into drive manager I saw that I had a volume/partition called ESP which was FAT32 and was 500MB. How do I change this to NTFS so the backup/system image works and out of interest what even is ESP? When a tick box comes up on what I would like to create a system image on, the C: drive box is ticked as well as the ESP box however they are blanked out so I have to select them.
So, not sure what it is that I did but something to do with one of the Microsoft services had me sign in using my email and password to the live Microsoft stuff (might have been trying to play solitaire).
Now when I boot up my desktop, it's always asking me for my password which I don't want to deal with as it's quite the extreme password. I think prior to signing in on Solitaire Win 10 never asked me for a password as it was being used local account.
How do I switch it back to being a local account so that I don't have to sign in to my desktop every time that I start it up.
I have four primary partitions (System, C: , D: , E: ) and some free space in my Win10 laptop. Now, I want to make create an extended partition which will hold C, D & E as logical partition. How can I do it without loosing data (i don't have a spare hard disk where I can backup the data).
I've some AVI and MP4 files with external .SRT subtitles that I'd like to convert to MKV with embedded subtitles (not forced).That way I can forget about the .srt files that don't always play properly on MEZZMO / SERVIIO or PLEX when streaming. The embedded ones always work properly !!.What's the best setting for Handbrake so I don't lose (or lose minimal) quality when re-encoding -- MP4->MKV should be almost a 1:1 copy but I'm not sure of the settings.
the subtitles all work though when embedded even if the original .SRT file didn't when streamed. (VLC always works BTW but I want to play these files on REMOTE DNLA devices).
