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Migrating a system disk but not the boot sectors

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My disk configuration is this

0 SSD 128 GB MBR with Windows 7
1 SDD 128 GB GPT empty
2 HD  128 GB GPT empty
3 HD  128 GB GPT empty
4 HD    3 TB GPT data disk

I usually use number 2 to keep a clone of number 0 but for now it's empty since I converted it to GPT.

What I want to do is to migrate number 0 (system-disk) to number 1 so that I can convert number 0 to GPT and install Windows 10 there. But I want the new Windows 7-disk (disk 1) to be GPT and get ride of MBR all together.

Cloning doesn't work as it will clone the boot sectors too, but there should be a way to migrate only the system, shouldn't there?

In short - disk 0 content ----> disk 1 but not the boot sectors.

As I have the luxury of 3 disks with the same size as disk 0 I hope that there is a relatively easy and safe way to do this.

I have looked at the help pages but the trouble is that it covers (too) many scenarios and I get lost.

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Arne, there have been a number of posts in the forum on the subject of MBR > GPT and GPT > MBR and these do seem to become quite complicated.

I bookmarked the following webpage which you may wish to look at before taking this further:

How to Convert MBR Disk to GPT Disk?  

The above uses the free Easeus Partition Manager software and can do the conversion without data loss as per their webpage information.  I have used Easeus PM lots of times over the years though never for this particular purpose.

As always, I would definately recommend having a full backup of your Windows OS SSD before attempting this conversion.

Thank you for the reply!

Yes, I'm sure it's very complicated to convert from MBR > GPT on a disk, especially a system disk. That's the reason I'm trying to avoid it. But as I said I want to do this in two steps.

1. Copy disk 0 content ----> disk 1 but not the boot sectors.  disk 0 will not change so I can check if disk 1 behaves like it should when booting from it.

2. If so I can format disk 0 to GPT and install Windows 10 on it.

I remember moving Windows Vista, I think it was, from one computer to another some years ago. It was neither the same computer or disk size but it went rather well. I think it was called migrating. Of course there was a lot of hand holding, otherwise I wouldn't have pulled it off.

So I would like you to concentrate on the first step, that's what my question really is about.

Is Acronis able to copy the content of one disk to the other without copying the boot sectors too?

Arne, if you backup your disk 0 (Entire disk) and restore this to your disk 1 then because disk 1 is in GPT format, my understanding is that it will omit the MBR by default because it is not used on UEFI / GPT drives.  However, I also understand that disk 1 will not be bootable when you do this because the boot configuration information is pointing now to the wrong place, i.e. disk 1 is connected to a different SATA port on the motherboard whereas the boot configuration is looking for the port that was used to boot disk 0 from.

I am not an expert in this area other than by learning from previous posts that have been handled here in the forums, but the drive cable issue is a key factor for anyone doing cloning for the same reason.

See the following sections from the ATIH 2016 User Guide that deals with some of your questions:

Recovering partitions and disks

expand this section of the user guide and you will see further sections such as:

Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI)

With Acronis True Image you also can convert BIOS to UEFI systems....

Migration method - which then lists all the different permutations of BIOS, MBR and UEFI configurations, such as:

BIOS-booted system, MBR, UEFI supported etc.