2TB 3 partition bootable MBR to 3 partition bootable GPT 4TB drive

videobruce said:

I don't have it yet.
The W7 is on a USB I believe it's been many years since I used it last, I rely on 1st generation images w/o all the add ons.

It doesn't matter. You're going to discard it anyway.

To make a Win 7 USB boot able drive:

Open a CMD window as administrator and type:

diskpart
list disk (it will list all drives. Identify the USB drive number)
select disk n (replace n by the USB drive number obtained with list disk)
clean
convert mbr
create part primary
select part 1
format fs=fat32 quick
assign
active
exit (to exit diskpart)

If you have a Win 7 installation iso file
On Win 7 use 7Zip to extract all files and folders from the Win 7 iso file to the USB drive.

If you have a Win 7 installation DVD
On a computer that has ODD, copy all files and folders from the DVD to the USB drive

To make it UEFI boot able you must add the \efi\boot folder



Installation
Windows can be installed in two ways: Legacy-MBR or UEFI-GPT
To install as Legacy-MBR you must boot the installation drive as Legacy
To install as UEFI-GPT you must boot the installation drive as UEFI.

As you have a UEFI BIOS, you should install as UEFI-GPT
Detach any other drives (SATA or Power cable) from the MB.

During POST, press F12 to launch the boot menu. You will see two options for the USB drive. USB UEFI (Name) and USB (Name). Select USB UEFI (Name) if you want to install as UEFI-GPT or select USB (name) if you want to install as Legacy-MBR.
Go to install and delete ALL partitions on the main drive till you have one and only one unallocated space and then proceed.


To make it universal (all Win 7 versions), go to \sources on the USB drive and delete \sources\ei.cfg

videobruce said:

Can I get this boot/FAT32 partition (whatever it is called) without doing a full Windows installed, or is that the only way?

It's just a few lines in command prompt.

diskpart
select disk 3
create partition efi size=100
format fs=fat32 quick

Could be done from within your current installation.

Why oh why would you do all this for a small stretch of FAT32. You could even create the partition in disk management and then change the partition ID. Basically you could shrink a partition of your GPT disk and start to practice right now.

Volume Z said:

It's just a few lines in command prompt.

diskpart
select disk 3
create partition efi size=100
format fs=fat32 quick

Could be done from within your current installation.

@Volume Z, OP doesn't have a OS on the 4T drive.

videobruce said:

I updated my previous post regarding RT7Lite if that matters.

There is text in Gigabytes MB manual regarding installing W7 and GPT partitions.;
" If you want to install a O/S like W7 x64 that supports GPT, select the optical drive w/ the W7 disk that is prefixed with UEFI string."

That is correct but if you follow the instructions above you will end with a Win 7 USB installation drive.

I can give you a link to a Win 7 SP1 installation files

As I already wrote, you don't need to install Win 7 on the new drive just to create the EFI and the MSR partition.
You can create both with diskpart commands, copy the Win 7 partition from the 2T drive and load the boot manager on the EFI partition.