GPT to MBR - will it persist for a WIN 7 Pro re-install?

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truwrikodrorowrelupicugojestutroclulachosaswunuhospikigawakijosaswenomaruclojeueclikaspedrubewidebrisubrohutrurifruuagothunugekedrumucisiuobrobrecrupeslapuswosluprothethibakaslechurathikucli
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I built my system on a Gigabyte mobo. Gigabyte lets you create an OEM re-install backup in its own partion, so you can quickly put the system back to a factory-fresh state. No problem there.

I got a Seagate 4TB Backup Plus Desktop drive, USB 3.0. I had a lot of trouble to get it to play nice with the system. After reading a lot of their forum advice, I decided to go back to square one: clear the CMOS, then reload the OS, Win 7 Pro 64-bit. I deleted all existing partions, including the OEM. Then, I created the partition again at the end of the disk for the OEM, and installed Win 7. When I had the essential mobo drivers loaded, I used the driver disk to boot into the setup program for OEM backup partition management. To my chagrin, the setup program failed, due to the disk not being MBR any more!

So: if I use DD 11 Home update 2 to convert the drive from GPT to MBR, will the change persist if I do another re-install of Win 7, as I did before? Now that I have DD, which I didn't have before the first re-install, I could load it up and convert the disk to MBR after another re-install, but I'd prefer to keep the OEM backup as lean as possible.

Sun, 05/05/2013 - 20:35
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truwrikodrorowrelupicugojestutroclulachosaswunuhospikigawakijosaswenomaruclojeueclikaspedrubewidebrisubrohutrurifruuagothunugekedrumucisiuobrobrecrupeslapuswosluprothethibakaslechurathikucli
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You can't use DD to convert GPT disk, from which an OS boots, to MBR - it can't convert OS booting scheme and should only be used for data-only GPT disks. AFAIK Windows install doesn't change disk scheme from MBR to GPT, so it should persist if you change it, but I'm not sure as you managed to change it once during Windows installation. Or maybe the disk is stil MBR, just OEM setup program can't detect it properly for some other reason?

Mon, 05/06/2013 - 03:56
truwrikodrorowrelupicugojestutroclulachosaswunuhospikigawakijosaswenomaruclojeueclikaspedrubewidebrisubrohutrurifruuagothunugekedrumucisiuobrobrecrupeslapuswosluprothethibakaslechurathikucli
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I just went through the re-install, paying very close attention to every message, warning, help file and tooltip. Whatever I did during the initial installation was probably the cause of the failure to get the external drive to place nice. I can live without the OEM re-installation partition as long as can backup to the external.

Thanks for your input, dev-anon!

Mon, 05/06/2013 - 18:25