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Clone 2tb MBR drive to new 4tb HDD -- convert MBR to GPT?

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Okay,

So my 2TB WD Black C: (main) HDD started acting a bit flaky with occasional locks/freeze. No blue screen. Reboot...no problem, but felt I might just go ahead and get a new drive...just to be sure. Got a new WD Black 4TB HDD to replace/upgrade with.

Well...that was the idea, anyhow.

I formatted it in Computer Management/Disk Management for the full 4TB. I used Acronis True Image to do a Clone on the disk. This took many hours to complete...and (of course) I ended up with an MBR 2TB drive with 2TBs of "Unallocated Space" that I can't do squat with.

My computer is an HP ENVY Phoenix 800-030qe with an Intel i7 4770, Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit. BIOS is set to "Legacy" on hard drives, dvd, etc. UEFI is toggled "off."

I've searched high and low to find a reasonable solution that doesn't (a) cost $30-50 in "iffy" software to convert MBR to GPT, or (b) require me to completely reload my operating system on this computer.

I know this is a large order, and I'm willing to spend time with it...but I'm not sure what I can do at this point.

Also..I have an EXTERNAL 3.0 USB 4TB Hard Drive (Seagate) that has PLENTY of room on it (if needed).

Many thanks in advance.

~Seanzilla

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Seanzilla, welcome to these public User Forums.

My computer is an HP ENVY Phoenix 800-030qe with an Intel i7 4770, Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit. BIOS is set to "Legacy" on hard drives, dvd, etc. UEFI is toggled "off."

This is the core issue here. Legacy / MBR will only support a maximum disk size of 2TB, so if you want to have access to the full 4TB for your new drive, you need to use UEFI which in turn requires the drive use GPT partitioning, not MBR.

The Acronis method of converting from MBR to GPT is to use the bootable Acronis Rescue Media to recover a backup of your source drive by booting the media in UEFI mode, which will migrate the restored data from MBR to GPT during the process.

Using Backup & Recovery for this migration is the safest approach as you would remove the original source drive from your computer during the recovery phrase, thus keeping this well away from any accidental choices that could overwrite it etc.  You would need to make a full Disk backup of the source drive to be stored on your spare 3TB drive, then shutdown, replace the original drive with the new one, then recover the backup to the new drive after booting in UEFI mode.

See KB 59877: Acronis True Image: how to distinguish between UEFI and Legacy BIOS boot modes of Acronis Bootable Media

Note that Steve's info is correct.  However, additionally, if you do this, your bios also needs to support UEFI mode and be configured to boot it as the default instead of legacy/MBR.

Here's a fairly thorough run-down of all this on Tom's Hardware forum (great place for information).

http://www.tomshardware.com/faq/id-1923415/install-windows-3tb-4tb-larger-hdd.html

**EDIT - just don't do the fresh install stuff... That is where Steve's info about booting the Acronis rescue media in UEFI mode an restoring from it to the new drive will automatically convert the new drive from MBR to UEFI/GPT.

 

Thanks for the information. I'll try to give this a go in the next few days when I have time. May have to wait until the weekend.

Really appreciate your help!

~S