Windows 10: How can i move my active partition to another disk?

Here is my situation and hoping i can get some help: 1) After checking the PC health checker for win11 upgrade, I found that my computer can't run Win11 because i don't have secure boot. After trying to turn it on in my BIOS to no avail, it seems it's due to me having installed windows in "Legacy" mode. 2) I previously had a 2TB HDD, and later installed a SSD. The system reserved partition is still on the SSD but the OS is installed on the SSD. 3) From doing some research it seems that i needed to convert my drive to GPT in order to activate secure boot, which i converted it but secure boot still would not work. 4) I tried to deactivate my 2 TB HDD and the computer says it can't boot from the disk, so i came to the conclusion that the System reserved partition needs to be on the GPT drive as well and then maybe secure boot will work. 5) Here is where i am stuck, i made a new partition on the GPT drive, cloned the system partition drive but i can't change it to an active partition. So my question is there anyway to do this without losing the disk data? My key objective is to enable secure boot ultimately... WIndows Version: 21H1 Build 19043.1081

:)

 

W7 Hard drive partition issue

to get rid of that 100 meg windows partition that setup creates for you on a new install on a blank hdd:

- press shift+f10 when on the partition management screen in setup <-- this opens a command prompt
- diskpart <-- start the windows command line partition management tool
- list disk <--- list the installed hdds in this computer for the next step
- select disk 0 <- might have to replace 0 with the number of the correct disk
- clean <-- this will erase all data on the disk you selected one step up- dont use the wrong disk!
- create partition primary <- creates a primary partition taking up all space on the drive, adjust the command if necessary
- exit, exit to exit diskpart and the command prompt
- click refresh in partition manager and select your newly created partition and install to that

 

Move Win7 64 image from a partition NTFS to a new drive

EDIT: After reading your first post again, is there any reason that you would now need GPT? Are you just trying to move the windows install to a new disk or is there a new motherboard involved?

If you are already booting to an NTFS partition, then it makes me wonder if after copying to the new drive, the partition isn't getting marked as Active.

Following the same steps I posted above for startup repair, you can get to a command prompt and use diskpart to see if this is the case.

Code: In the command prompt: diskpart list disk select disk 0 (disk number may be different if you have other disks connected.) list partition select partition 0 (partition number number may vary, but you want to see the boot partition which is the same as your windows partition according to the screenshot on the OP) detail partition (This should have Active: Yes or No. If it says no, since we have the partition selected, you can just use the following command in diskpart) active[/quote]

 

unmark a partition as "active"

Hello Bob,

Thank you for posting your concern in Microsoft Community and welcome to the Windows 10 Family.

Please be informed that marking a partition as active on a basic disk means that the computer will use the loader (an operating system tool) on that partition to start the operating system. An active partition is a partition on a hard drive set as the bootable
partition that contains the operating system. So it is not advisable to configure anything related to boot partition.

Please follow the below steps to unmark the partition as active:

• 
  Open command prompt by pressing Windows key + X and selecting “Command prompt admin”.
  
• 
  Type in diskpart and press Enter.
  
• To identify which disk you need to work with. Type the command: list disk.
  
  This will list all the drives connected to your computer.
• 
  To select the disk enter the command: select disk n
  
  "n" will correspond to the disk # for the ssd you are referring to.
  
• 
  To list all the partitions on the disk enter the command:
  list partition
  
• 
  To select a partition use: select partition n
  
  Substitute "n" correctly and it will select the particular partitions on that drive.
  
• 
  To unmark the current partition as active use the command line:
  inactive
  
• 
  Exit the command prompt using command:
  exit
  
• 
  Reboot the system to let the changes happen.
  

Hope the above information is helpful. If you need further assistance, we would be happy to help you.

Thank you.