Using Macrium7 (free) to clone main 1TB HDD to 3TB HDD -make bootable?

mikeasu · 14 Jul 2018

Hello all,

So I'm simply trying to upgrade from a 1 TB HDD to a 3 TB HDD. I was hoping, rather than backing up all of my data, and doing a fresh install of windows, then reinstalling everything - to instead do a simple clone, but make my main data partition bigger, taking advantage of the increased HDD space.

Right now, I'm running with the default windows 10 partition setup, from when I installed it several years ago, so my C: partition is the bootable one. Managed to use Macrium to build partitions the way I'd like in the new HDD, and copy/clone the data over, but haven't figured out how to make intended main partition (D: in the attached image) bootable. Ideally, I copy everything over, then remove the old HDD and just run with the new one here on out. I figure I'm just missing something obvious, but stumped. Any ideas? Figure with intended partition setup attached.

Thanks in advance,

Mike S

SIW2 · 14 Jul 2018

Not clear if you have tried it yet? You are cloning from 1tb mbr to 3tb gpt. I don't know if macrium will sort that out automatically, it might. There are lots of programs you could do it with, but they vary in their implementations. If it doesn't work, you could try running the bootcorrector module - which might only be available in macrium winpe.

Otherwise, there are other ways it can be fixed up if non bootable.

clone mbr to gpt disk

mikeasu · 14 Jul 2018

SIW2 said:

Not clear if you have tried it yet

My bad - yes, I tried it - macrium was good in that it let me resize the partitions manually quite nicely. So, I had everything copied, just not bootable. Forgot about the GPT/MBR issue - trying a cloning with AOMEI now.

lx07 · 14 Jul 2018

You can't just convert mbr to gpt as BIOS will not boot gpt - you can only boot gpt from UEFI.

mbr has a limit of 2TB bootable volume

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/...rger-than-2-tb

cereberus · 14 Jul 2018

As LX07 says, you cannot do what you want. Aomei will make no difference.

If PC supports UEFI, you can clone 1TB to an mbr drive, subject to maximum partition of 2TB, then convert mbr drive to gpt (see mbr2gpt tutorial), and then expand C drive to fill drive.

If pc does not support UEFI, then as @lx07 says, you cannot use all of 3TB.
(only 2TB).

Stitch194 · 14 Jul 2018

I hope you didn't try to boot your PC with the new cloned connected through the USB. Windows can't boot from USB connected drives. When you clone your system disk to a USB connected external drive, to boot with the newly created clone, the original physical disk must be removed and swapped out with the USB created clone connected to your Motherboard SATA port.