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ATI 2018 is converting a MBR disk image to GPT during Restore

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I have backed up an MBR SSD to an image file.  The source disk is 100% for sure an MBR disk.  When I go to restore that image to another SSD drive I get the message at the bottom of the restore screen that reads "The selected disk will be converted to a GPT layout that makes this disk bootable".  Problem is that if it is converted to GPT it will not boot.  How do I stop ATI from converting the disk to GPT?

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You need to do the restore from the Recovery media. You also need to boot the Recovery media in Legacy mode. If you boot it in UEFI mode, the target disk will always be converted to GPT.

In reply to by truwrikodrorow…

Thanks Mustang.  Yes I figured out that if I boot from a USB right on the machine in question I was able to restore in the same format as it was created (MBR).  I did not know that I couldnt boot to UEFI mode though so that is valuable information.  I assume that is because secure boot always requires GPT?

It is because UEFI requires GPT. :)

This is an absolutely absurd design decision which has just wasted me countless hours, so thanks for that from a long-time, repeat Acronis customer who gets more and more annoyed by the quirks of each release I've upgraded to. (And therefore increasingly less likely to give you any more of my money.)

FORCING the user to convert to GPT unless they boot from recovery is ridiculous. Give me the option to *choose* whether I want the layout converted or not. A simple warning that there's a conflict between my current machine's setup and that of the drive I backed up -- along with a checkbox to choose my preferred method -- would have saved me hours of trying to fix the Windows install your software *intentionally* broke because it thought it knew better than I did.

I am pretty certain that users backing up and restoring drives from multiple machines on a single machine is not an unusual edge case.

Michael, welcome to these public User Forums.

Please submit Feedback directly to Acronis (use the tool provided in the GUI Help section) and ask for your vote to be added to the Acronis internal feature request: 

TI-179333 Allow selecting the boot mode (BIOS or UEFI) after recovery/cloning.

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Michael Tomkins wrote:

This is an absolutely absurd design decision which has just wasted me countless hours, so thanks for that from a long-time, repeat Acronis customer who gets more and more annoyed by the quirks of each release I've upgraded to. (And therefore increasingly less likely to give you any more of my money.)

FORCING the user to convert to GPT unless they boot from recovery is ridiculous. Give me the option to *choose* whether I want the layout converted or not. A simple warning that there's a conflict between my current machine's setup and that of the drive I backed up -- along with a checkbox to choose my preferred method -- would have saved me hours of trying to fix the Windows install your software *intentionally* broke because it thought it knew better than I did.

Hello Michael, added your feedback as votes for the change request TI-179333 Allow selecting the boot mode (BIOS or UEFI) after recovery/cloning, thank you!