Windows 10: Upgrading boot drive, how do I preserve my installation but create new GPT disk partitions

Hello,


My PC's boot disk has a faulty partition layout and as a result I cannot properly restart or put my computer to sleep.


While resolving this, I would like to take the opportunity to upgrade my boot drive to a fast 1TB M2 drive.
Unfortunately, cloning the current boot disk seems to preserve the partitions, while I would like to resolve my startup problem by e.g. letting Windows create a new partition layout.
I wonder if there is a way to do so while copying everything else from my current installation including all programs, settings,... ?

:)

 

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

 

Installing Windows Vista/7 on a GUID Partition Table

Background

GUID Partition Table (GPT) is a boot sector technology poised to replace the venerable Master Boot Record (MBR) principally because MBR has a maximum capacity of 2 TB for a single partition (some single disks have reached 3 TB). Installing Windows on a GPT is a bit tricky because Windows wants to default back to MBR. In order to force Windows on to a GPT, we have to pre-format the drive prior to Windows installation. You can do that during Windows setup using the console.

Requirements

• Windows Vista or 7 (must be 64-bit no matter which OS is used)
• A motherboard with EFI BIOS
• A means to EFI boot the Windows setup (I had to use a USB DVD drive on MSI Z77A-G65, the internal SATA Bluray drives didn't have an EFI option)

Instructions

• Boot into Windows setup using EFI. On the MSI Z77A-G65, it showed up as UEFI:USB-ATAPI DVD ... This will change according to your motherboard and how you are attempting to enter setup. This step is critical. Without booting into setup via EFI, only MBR is available to the setup. There's no easy way to tell from within setup if it is running via EFI or not.
• Once you have booted into setup, continue through the process as you would normally until you reach the dialog which shows you the available drives. Load a driver, if necessary, then press SHIFT+F10 to open the command prompt.
• In the command prompt, enter the following lines, pressing enter after each one. Note that the <id> field below is the disk ID that you want to format as GPT from the "list disk" command. If there's only one drive, <id> will likely be 1. Note: All data on the drive will be lost during this process. Make sure to select the correct drive.
  • diskpart
  • list disk
  • select disk <id>
  • online disk
  • attributes disk clear readonly
  • clean
  • convert gpt
  • create partition efi size=102
  • create partition msr size=32
  • create partition primary
  • format fs=ntfs label="Operating System"
  • assign letter=C
  • exit
  "online disk" and "attributes disk clear readonly" are likely to fail. Don't worry, they are only precautionary. Change the drive letter and label to whatever you want. Also, the above command (specifically "create partition primary") will consume all remaining space on the drive. If you want multiple partitions with fixed sizes, substitute what you want in place of "create partition primary."
• You may now close the command prompt and click on "Refresh" back in the dialog to choose where to install Windows. You should now see at least 2 partitions (I think Microsoft Reserved is hidden) and it will only let you install on a non EFI/MSR partition. Click on the primary partition and proceed with the installation as normal.
• Note that in the EFI BIOS after installing Windows via EFI, you can no longer directly boot the volume Windows is installed on. Instead, you must boot via "Windows Boot Manager" (on MSI Z77A-G65, it was "UEFI: Windows Boot Manager"). Keep that in mind if you wish to tweak the boot order.

Conclusion

That should do it. You should be in Windows with >2 TB of hard drive capacity available if you had more than 2 TB on the Windows partition. Congratulations being on the bleeding edge of technology! *Rockout :rockout:

 

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]