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Cloning win7 hdd mbr to ssd (forces gpt)

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Hello,

I'm trying to clone a HDD 500gb of size partitioned as MBR to a SSD drive. Whenever I try to clone, acronis forces me to use GPT even though the original partition is as MBR. I even converted the SSD to MBR beforehand and it still forced GPT.

How should I proceed about this, what would be the best way to handle the clone? When I "just let" acronis do it, I'm unable to boot from the SSD.

Other settings are normal but I converted it as is. The operation system used is windows 7.

I'd greatly appreciate help with this. Should I simply ditch the SSD and just clone it to HDD, can I then use MBR and have less variables on the cloning process?

Yours

Jesse

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Jesse, welcome to these User Forums.

Can you please confirm how you are attempting to perform the clone operation here?
Are you doing this from within Windows from the ATI app or
Are you booting from the Acronis Rescue Media to do this? (Latter is recommended).

Also which version of ATI are you using here, is this ATI 2018 as per this forum?

The normal reason why ATI will want to convert from MBR to GPT when cloning is because this is being done on a UEFI system or the Acronis Rescue Media was booted from in UEFI mode.

If you boot the Acronis Rescue Media in Legacy (or CSM) mode, then the clone should keep the MBR format for the SSD.

My guess is that you are using bootable Recovery Media to perform the clone.  Steve is correct that booting the media in the correct mode will solve the issue.

When you select the boot media in the machine bios boot order select the entry for your media device that DOES NOT have UEFI in its name.  Doing so will boot the media in Legacy MBR mode.

Hey,

 

Thanks for the quick replies. While the idea is nice, for some reason the media I got from acronis doesn't let me boot it in legacy, only uefi works. It does show both boots but no matter the settings in BIOS, legacy doesn't work.

I've got two different disks that are mbr partitioned that boot nicely but for some reason I just can't make acronis boot into legacy.

Is there another media that would let me install the bootable media as straight up bios (not the one that supports both uefi and bios)?

 

-Jesse

 

edit: I'd like to add on the BIOS settings since I'll likely get comments on them. They're done properly, legacy enabled, tried with both as well. Secure boot disabled. AHCI - check etc. Played with a few other settings just to try and not working. Only agrees to boot the acronis media on UEFI, legacy not recognized. I'd like to blame the media since other legacy disks boot without a problem. The bootable media was done with rufus.

Hi,

 

I'd like to add the resolution as well. The problem was caused by a 64bit USB stick. I changed to a 32GB one and that worked fine. Found the solution somewhere, apparently legacy doesn't like anything bigger than 32GB when it comes to booting.

Jesse, thanks for your updates with the solution to this issue.

Please see KB 58108: Acronis products: using USB sticks with more than 32GB capacity - which one of our MVP's Karl, wrote a while back on this subject.