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UEFI with MBR: Can I upgrade from Windows 7 to 10?
My Windows 7 Pro pc had BIOS on the motherboard, MBR on the 120GB SSD boot disk, and GPT on the 3TB HDD data disk. I was running out of room on the boot disk (and it was developing bad sectors) so I decided to switch it to a HDD with plenty of room (yes, SSD back to HDD.) So I cloned the boot disk to a new 3TB HDD. Of course since it's MBR, I can't access the entire disk. I also upgraded the mobo from BIOS to UEFI. So now I have these specs:
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Z68X-UD3H-B3 Rev 1.0 with UEFI
Boot disk: 3TB MBR HDD with MBR
Data disk: 3TB HDD HDD with GPT
OS: Windows 7 Pro
I'm considering an upgrade-in-place to Windows 10. The Windows 10 "assistant" says my pc is "good to go" but I'm concerned because it's UEFI with an MBR boot disk. Moreoever, I can't make use of the entire boot disk right now. I'm not sure how best to proceed.
- Can I upgrade from Windows 7 to 10 as things are now, with UEFI on the mobo and MBR on the boot drive?
- Are there good third-party tools to convert my boot drive from MBR to GPT without data loss?
- Am I better off flashing the mobo back to the its old BIOS? (And just not using the entire boot drive.)
- Is it worth investing in a larger SSD to use as an MBR boot drive? And just using the 3TB HDD as expansion space.
- Is upgrading in place my several years old Windows 7 install a bad idea in the first place? (Should I just stick with 7 anyway?)
Thanks for you thoughts.