Convert MBR Disk to GPT Disk

You're most welcome Daisuke. I'm glad it could help. :)

Cooee Brink

I spent the evening reading your excellent post while enjoying a few of my homebrews, quite a good read

I dual boot with XP 32x86 & W7x64 with EasyBCD in W7, top software

I added 2x3TB HDD earlier this year & formatted them as MBR's, as I use my XP for everyday stuff & my W7 as my gaming rig

when I boot into XP my 3TB HDD's sees them as 2 seperate drives & the W7 only sees the 2TB portions of them, not the other 1TB

I will disconnect 1 of those 3TB HDD's & copy all the data to external drives

my question is, how do I get my full 3TB partion back in W7? do I go into disk management & delete those 2 partitions & it will show as 1 drive so I can convert it to GPT? I do not need to partion those HDD's as it will be all used for data (read .mkv files or .avi files; get the picture, or is that vids :))

thank you in advance

cheers

Hello beardrinksbeer, and welcome to Seven Forums.

The issue is that MBR only supports only up to 2TB partitions, so only 2TB of your 3TB HDD was being seen and used while it was formatted with the MBR file system. You could have two partitions on the 3TB with one a 2TB and the other 1TB to be able to use all 3TB on the HDD with MBR.

When you convert the 3TB HDD to have a GPT partition, then yes both XP (if 64-bit) and Windows 7 will see the HDD as one single 3TB HDD with all space available on one partition.

Hope this helps, :)
Shawn

Cooee Brink & thanx for the welcome

I have the 3TB set up as 2TB & 1TB but W7 only sees the 2TB part, not the 1TB part; but the XP sees both & has them as 2 separate partitions.

how can W7 change the MBR to GPT when it only sees the 2TB part only?

bear,

Double check in Disk Management to see if the 1TB partition has a drive letter assigned to it or not while in Windows 7. If not, then you could just add one.

If you wanted to convert the HDD to GPT, then Windows 7 will see all 3TB as one partition after doing the steps in the tutorial. :)

Cooee Brink

the 1TB partition is unallocated in W7, but the options are greyed out. but this is good, I can transfer all the files over when in XP & then do what you wrote in your excellent tutorial :)

I am nearly ready to install W7 over XP; I will miss XP like I missed 98SE

thanx for all your help Brink :) cheers

Your most welcome Bear. Please let us know how it went. :)

If you like, you could still run your XP from a virtual machine in Windows 7.

Cooee Brink

I shall let you know how it goes after I get everything done tomorrow as I am backing up my 2x3TB HDD's, it is a slow process, lucky my brain is slow today after all the beer I drank last night :)

but it gave me a thought, as I will have 2xW7 x64 on the same HDD, I can just clone over the gaming set-up I have for W7 & uninstall all the games to free up space & get easyBCD to manage the booting sequence; that will save me doing a fresh install over XP, just clone W7 over it, that will save time :)

I still have XP on another comp, if I want to go down memory lane :) but I ran compatability thingy on this good comp & everything should be OK. I even got my Lide 35 to work in W7 thanx to this site :) I used another comp that I put W7 on to check my scanner & printer to see if I could get them working be4 the jump to 7; no, not going to 8

cool site here, just wish my eyes could focus better :)

cheers

That sounds like a good plan.

job done, well almost, the files take yonks to copy back

easy job with all this help, cheers