Clone a Windows Installation to a 3TB Hard Drive; MBR to GPT
- by DanBlakemore
I have Windows 7 Professional 64-bit installed on my desktop. Unfortunately for me and my wallet my hard drive is failing. I have purchased a 3TB hard drive as a replacement for my current 2TB drive. I would like to avoid as much hassle as possible in moving to this new drive so I would like to copy my current partition to the new drive using Gparted. The problem is that I suspect that my current partition is MBR, and I need GPT on my new drive since it is 3TB.
Can I simply copy the MBR partition onto the new disk and then convert it to GPT after the fact (can you even convert the type of a partition)?
Or would I need to somehow copy the contents of the partition into a GPT partition on the new drive?
How do I go about making this transistion?
Also, are there any issues I should be wary of booting to a GPT partition? If it matters, my motherboard is 1 year old as of May, 2012.
Edit:
My motherboard is 1 day old. My old one does not have UEFI compatibility, so I decided to make an upgrade to Intel today given that I would need a UEFI motherboard to use my new HDD.
How much can I use a dying hard drive (bad sectors according to Hitachi Drive Fitness Test)?
I have assumed not at all, to be safe.