Clone windows 7 to new gpt drive

[legolasdf]

hello. I'm new here so sorry if i have made the thread in the wrong place.
i have a seagate 2tb hard drive that recently started having bad blocks. so i bought a seagate 4tb drive.
I have a motherboard compatible with UEFI(asus P8H61-M LX) and a Windows 7 Ultimate x64.
My question is: how can I clone my atual 2tb drive(which is mbr) to the new 4tb drive and make it bootable? if possible, explain to me step-by-step.

Thanks in advance for any reply.

 

[ignatzatsonic]

Ten minutes with Google tells me there are a lot of people that want to do this, but I can't find a clearcut answer.

Lot of suggestions, try this, try that, reports of errors and roadblocks, and more suggestions and guesses.

All I can suggest is to try your own Google-fu and hope.

I'd probably throw in the towel without trying and just do a clean install in the interest of avoiding frustration.

 

[gregrocker]

That large of a drive needs to be formatted GPT for Windows to recognize it all. So it must have the OS residing on it be installed to UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) - Install Windows 7 with - Windows 7 Forums.

This cannot be converted from an image of an MBR install. So you must Clean Reinstall Windows 7.

 

[legolasdf]

and there goes my hope of not having to do a clean install. anyways, after i install windows on the new drive
there's a way to restore it to be like my previous drive?

 

[pbcopter]

What I have done successfully, is to do a clean install on the GPT drive using UEFI DVD entry from the boot menu.
This is to create the boot partition (system reserved). The C: partition will be overwritten in the next step.

Then restore the original image of just the C: drive of the original Windows 7 installation to the C: partiiton of the just completed clean install (I use Acronis True Image). You may need to repair the startup using the EUFI DVD entry if it does not boot properly.


You may be able to just restore the original image to the GPT drive and then accomplish a startup repair using the UEFI DVD entry. I have not tried this however.

 

[gregrocker]

This is interesting. You're able to restore C from an MBR disk to a GPT disk after clean installing to create the UEFI Boot partitions? I've never heard of that.

Please let us know how this goes as it would be an important workaround.

 

[legolasdf]

What I have done successfully, is to do a clean install on the GPT drive using UEFI DVD entry from the boot menu.
This is to create the boot partition (system reserved). The C: partition will be overwritten in the next step.

Then restore the original image of just the C: drive of the original Windows 7 installation to the C: partiiton of the just completed clean install (I use Acronis True Image). You may need to repair the startup using the EUFI DVD entry if it does not boot properly.


You may be able to just restore the original image to the GPT drive and then accomplish a startup repair using the UEFI DVD entry. I have not tried this however.

i see. as soon as the 4tb drive arrives, probably late tomorrow, I'll do that and let you guys know if it was successful.

 

[GeneO]

This is interesting. You're able to restore C from an MBR disk to a GPT disk after clean installing to create the UEFI Boot partitions? I've never heard of that.

Please let us know how this goes as it would be an important workaround.

This should help using macrium reflect:

How to Restore an MBR System image to UEFI/GPT (Convert, GPT, MBR, Restore)