Windows 10: Novice question on MBR/Legacy installation System Partition

Novice question on MBR/Legacy installation System Partition

Greetings.

Recently did a fresh installation on an ancient MBR/Legacy machine using the latest 1909 ISO. The process created a 579 MB System Partition consisting of two folders, Boot and Recovery, among other items. See attached pic.

1. What's the purpose of the Recovery folder? How to access it?
2. Can it be omitted?
3. How to create the Recovery folder manually? Using MS tools such as bcdboot/bcdedit? Bootice? Others?

Many thanks and best regards,

:)

 

clone MBR HD to bootable GPT partition?

Hi,

1. You cannot convert mbr to gpt without data loss. otherwise, you can follow directions here:

FROM WINDOWS RECOVERY CONSOLE:

To change a master boot record disk into a GUID partition table disk using a command line

• 
  Back up or move the data on the basic master boot record (MBR) disk you want to convert into a GUID partition table (GPT) disk.
  
• 
  Open an elevated command prompt (right-click Command Prompt, and then click Run as Administrator) and type diskpart. If the disk does not contain any partitions or volumes, skip to step 6.
  
• 
  At the DISKPART prompt, type list disk. Make note of the disk number you want to convert.
  
• 
  At the DISKPART prompt, type select disk <disknumber>.
  
• 
  At the DISKPART prompt, type clean.
  

2. I'd suggest converting your vista drive to a virtual machine, load that up on your windows 10 system and use a program like virtualbox to run it.

 

Windows 10 AU clean install UEFI vs Legacy

Honestly the choice is yours, I always install in Legacy Mode as I find it easier to recover from potential System Failures.

Some Information on the 2 Systems, may help you decide:

Unified Extensible Firmware Interface(UEFI) is the successor to BIOS. UEFI uses the GUID Partition Table (GPT) whereas BIOS uses the Master Boot Record(MBR) partitioning scheme. GPT and MBR are both formats specifying physical
partitioning information on the hard disk. Below I have listed the difference:

• Max partition size in MBR is ~2TB whereas in UEFI it is ~9 ZetaBytes
• MBR can have at max 4 primary partition whereas GPT can have 128.
• MBR can store only one bootloader whereas GPT has a separate dedicated EFI System Partition(ESP) for storing multiple bootloaders. This is very helpful if you have two or more operating systems which require different bootloaders.
• UEFI offers secure boot which can prevent boot-time viruses from loading.

I hope this Helps!

 

Convert only one partition on the disk from MBR to GPT

Follow the steps listed here on using GPTgen. He also lists how to create and restore backups.

Converting MBR to GPT without deleting your partitions