Hello,
I am planning to clone my old 120GB boot disk to a new 500GB disk. The old was formatted with MBR while the new has been formatted with GPT. Is it possible for me to complete this operation? If yes, please show me specific steps to clone an MBR disk to GPT disk. By the way, do I need to make the 2 disks have the same format in advance? System specs: Windows 8 x32.
It can be very easy to image a disk, but third party drive clone software is needed since Windows itself does not provide a good solution. Here, we recommend the free drive copy software MiniTool Drive Copy. It can clone an MBR disk or GPT disk to both MBR and GPT disk in extremely simple operations. Moreover, since it is a read-only program, no operate will be made on data. Apart from imaging disk, it is able to clone a single partition, too. Next, we will show users detailed steps to image a disk with the recommended drive copy freeware.
How to Clone an MBR Disk to GPT with MiniTool Drive Copy
Step 1: launch the free drive copy software to get its main window:
Here, 2 functional modules are shown, namely “Disk to Disk” and “Partition to Partition”.
Step 2: select the module which is specially designed o clone the whole disk, namely choosing “Disk to Disk”.
Step 3: select the disk which needs imaging and click “Next>”.
Step 4: select the disk where the content in source disk will be saved and click “Next>”.
Step 5: choose a copying method according to actual demands and click “Next>”.
Step 6: read the copy disk wizard note carefully and make sure how to boot from the new disk. Then, click “Finish” button.
Step 7: click “Yes” to start copying an MBR disk to GPT disk and wait until the automatic copy is completed by the free drive copy software. Note: to copy a system disk, users will be required to restart computer since there are drives being used. Just do as told, and the copy will be made automatically.
After copy, if users want to boot from the new disk, shut down computer and demount the old disk, and then start computer. Of course, if users want to boot from the new disk without demounting the old disk, configure the new disk as the default boot disk in BIOS setting.
Moreover, another issue should be mentioned. Cloning an MBR disk to GPT will make the GPT disk become an MBR disk. If the original GPT disk is more than 2TB, the space beyond 2TB will be unallocated and can not be used to extend any partition or create partition in Windows Disk Management. At this time, download a free partitioning tool to extend a partition to the unallocated space. It’s useful.