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How do I clone an MBR partitioned boot disk to GPT partitioned disk
My current hard drive is dying, so claims Windows and Hitachi Drive Fitness Test. I bought a replacement drive 3TB drive which requires GPT partitioning.
I have 64 bit windows and a UEFI motherboard, so I know I can use the drive as a boot drive for a brand new installation.
My question is how do I move the entire contents of my old drive to this new drive and keep it bootable?
I asked on other another site and they suggested I first let the Windows installation disk partition the drive GPT correctly for Windows, then copy the contents of the old drive to the new one. However, another person on that site said that that would break all the symlinks (didn't know symlinks played such a crucial role in the OS) and that I should use a cloning utility that knows how to copy NTFS. Was this person off base, or is it impossible to create a bootable copy of a Windows installation by just copying all the files (this would be from live linux of some type, not Windows itself)? If it is impossible, is there a utility that can copy the contents of a partition correctly, without needing to clone the entire partition table?
Also, I have no room to make an image of my old drive anywhere.
Finally, does anyone know if clonezilla can copy an mbr partition to a gpt partition automatically, essentially doing exactly what I need, or will it always copy the partition scheme as well?
Thanks