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Cloning and MBR2GPT

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Hi, newbie here, I hope this is the correct forum for this question. If it isn't I will remove it. I just purchased Acronis 2020 Advanced.

What steps should I take for successful cloning of my Windows 10 boot disk (5OOGB Crucial M.2 SATA (legacy) drive - to a new NVME Samsung 1T (GUID) drive, to be used as the new boot disk? My motherboard is a Z390 chipset / Intel CPU, that supports either UEFI or legacy drives.

I'm generally ignorant about this stuff, but I'm thinking that first of all, I will create a bootable WinPE based recovery disk on a thumb drive. Next, I'm thinking of cloning the legacy Windows 10 boot disk to another spare legacy ssd as back up before trying to migrate to the new drive, just in case something goes wrong. I'm not sure how to proceed after that, due to the differing MBR and GPT formats of the source disk and target NVME drive. I was hoping someone could point me in the right direction.

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Stephen, welcome to these public User Forums.

Some initial thoughts on your questions here:

First, make a full disk backup of what you have today while it is working correctly 'as is' and before you start making any changes!  This is your safety net against any issues arising later.

Next, definitely make the Acronis bootable Rescue Media and test that you understand how to use this.  This goes hand in hand with your full disk backup image for recovery.

After the above, I would recommend getting your current 5OOGB Crucial M.2 SATA (legacy) drive working in UEFI / GPT mode before attempting to migrate from it to the new NVME Samsung 1T (GUID) drive (which requires UEFI mode to operate).

The options for moving from Legacy to UEFI on the current drive are several.  You can use the MBR2GPT tool provided with Windows 10 as per this topic title, or you can boot your computer from the Acronis rescue media in UEFI mode and recover your full disk backup to the drive which will also migrate it from Legacy to UEFI / GPT mode.

Note: you should check the BIOS boot mode settings before making any changes - make notes of how they are today (or snap some pictures with a phone or camera), then make sure that you understand how to boot in either Legacy or UEFI modes.  With the latter, after migrating to UEFI, you will need to have the Windows Boot Manager as the BIOS boot option, not the actual drive as used for Legacy boot.

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

KB 63226: Acronis True Image 2020: how to create bootable media

KB 63295: Acronis True Image 2020: How to restore your computer with WinPE-based or WinRE-based media

Stephen,

Are you certain that your computer supports NVMe boot?

Have you researched what changes you need to make in your bios setup screens to boot your computer in UEFI mode?

These are the first considerations you must address.

Once you have those sorted then I recommend the following:

First, run chkdsk /f on all partitions on your M.2 SATA drive to check for and correct any errors in the file system.  This will avoid there being problems with the rest of the process.

Second, using the Acronis Bootable Rescue Media Builder tool to create a Simple WinRE boot media on a USB flash drive.  Make sure that you can boot that media.  The media is created so that it can be booted as either Legacy /CSM (MBR-BIOS) (your current setup) or UEFI. 

I then encourage you to boot this media in Legacy mode, then change your bios setup to enable UEFI boot and boot the media in UEFI mode.  Once you have confidence in this and that you understand the difference then you can proceed.

I would recommend after you complete the above processes that you create a Full disk backup of your current disk as Steve suggests however, I recommend that you do so using the bootable media you have created.  Make the backup while booted in Legacy mode.

Once you have that done, remove the M.2 SATA drive from the machine and replace it with the NVMe drive.  Once installed, boot the machine into the bios setup and set the machine to boot UEFI.  Using the bootable media this time in UEFI mode, boot the machine and use the TI app to restore the image you created to the NVMe drive.  At the final stage of the restore setup you will see a green colored box at the bottom of the screen advising that the disk will be changed to GPT format.  This is normal and expected.  If you do not see that then you should cancel the restore as something is not right with the setup.  Most likely in this case you are not booted in UEFI mode. (Tip: to ensure UEFI boot mode look for UEFI in the name of the bootable media when selecting the device to boot from)

Once the restore process completes, shutdown the computer by closing the TI app then, in the command prompt that remains type wpeutil shutdown.  Now remove the bootable media and then start the machine.  It should boot to your new drive just fine.

Please read the User Guide starting on page 97 for a rundown on this process as well.  Guide link below:

User Guide