Windows 10: No Recovery Partition after clone, and MBR to GPT.

Hey fellas,
Moving forward from this thread.....(just for reference.....Help with SSD boot drive change)

Single boot drive MBR was cloned with Macrium to larger ssd and removed smaller ssd. Windows booted fine.
MBR2GPT converted the new drive, but gave the message...."Failed to update ReAgent.xml...manually disable and enable WinRE"
Bios set to boot uefi. All seemed good with windows booting fine.
I followed up on the WinRE and ran in elevated command prompt...
Reagentc //info
Reagentc /disable
Reagentc /enable
So that seems fine. Here is a screen capture after re-running Reagentc /info

Microsoft Windows [Version 10.0.19042.746]
(c) 2020 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
C:\WINDOWS\system32>reagentc /info
Windows Recovery Environment (Windows RE) and system reset configuration
Information:
Windows RE status: Enabled
Windows RE location: \\?\GLOBALROOT\device\harddisk0\partition1\Recovery\WindowsRE
Boot Configuration Data (BCD) identifier: 7d4f223f-602f-11eb-831f-244bfe9a6531
Recovery image location:
Recovery image index: 0
Custom image location:
Custom image index: 0
REAGENTC.EXE: Operation Successful.

So that now seems fine. And indeed there are a bunch of hidden folders on the c:/ root like $WinREAgent, etc.

In Disk Manager, I now see an unallocated partition, which should be the "Recovery Partition".




Do I need to worry about this? Reset it somehow to "recovery partition"? Reclaim the unused space somehow? Move somehow the hidden WinRE environment to this partition?
Original drive is still intact, and no changes to new drive other than web browsing so I could do it all over if there is something I missed first time around.
Thanks all.

:)

 

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.

 

clone MBR HD to bootable GPT partition?

My HP Vista laptop took a swim and died. I pulled the 320MB HD, put it in an external enclosure and found it still good. Bought a new Dell Win 10 machine w/ 1TB HD. Plan was to:

• 
  Partition off a piece of the new 1TB w/ native Win10 Disk Management.
  
• 
  Clone the 320MB Vista drive into the new partition w/ Easeus Partition Manager.
  
• 
  Run Paragon-adaptive-restore on the Vista partition.
  
• 
  Set up as dual-boot Win10 / Vista.
  

Ran into problems right away. Apparently can't clone the MBR HD to a GPT partition and have it remain bootable. Don't see a way to do this without wiping the new Dell 1TB clean – which I'm hesitant to do, especially since I'm about 6000 miles from
home right now.

• 
  What's the solution to cloning the MBR drive to a bootable GPT partition?
  
• 
  Am I on the right track? I really want to preserve this Vista installation - I have 30+ years of data in legacy programs on it that would be very difficult to access in Win10.
  

TIA

 

clone MBR HD to bootable GPT partition?

I think in 1.) you're giving me details on how to wipe out my Win10 drive, which doesn't help.

It sounds like I CAN clone a bootable MBR into a GPT drive partition if I start off with a completely empty drive. So if I go buy a fresh 1TB drive and clone the MBR drive into it first (partitioning as GPT) then I'll be able to clone the Win10 into it
and have a dual-bootable system?

I'm also intrigued by your 2.) answer although it was short on details. I'll go search about "virtual machines" and see if I can get there that way.