SSD wiped itself

daktoahorse24 said:

Hmm, I am not actually sure about the MBR/GPT, this SSD was cloned from the stock HDD almost a year ago. So maybe something caused it to convert?.... I can't think of anything I did, the computer was on all night downloading, then I have it set to turn off on its own,

I am not sure about the Partition sizes, I know one is a small Asus recovery, and the other was there from Asus... The unallocated space has never been there before, and I was thinking that it could have something to do with this whole issue, I tried partition recovery No luck.

Could I use PW and convert it to GPT?

I wouldn't try doing any conversion now. That can destroy data.

I think you want to focus on getting the Windows recovery tools up and running on the problem laptop (hard drive installed of course) and see if you can rebuild the Windows MSR and the boot manager. Don't make any other changes until you have exhausted that effort.

Since you know that those 2 small partitions at the end of the drive were there before we can assume that that unallocated space at the beginning of the drive was where the MSR used to be. How it got deleted is a mystery and something to deal with later.

The MBR/GPT thing is also secondary. How that could happen is beyond me.

If you can get a Windows Installation Disk (or USB) to boot and you can get to the Recovery Tools (Repair MY Computer), then do the options listed here:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/...del-to-restart

Try each method, starting with Method 1 first.

Another note regarding Method 1: In Windows 7 it was often necessary to run Startup Repair 3 times to completely rebuild the Boot Files. I don't know if this still applies to Windows 10, but if it doesn't work the first time I would try running it 2 or three times after.

The MSR is used on UEFI/GPT systems, to support software components that formerly used hidden sectors in MBR disks.
If your disk is formatted GPT then it must have the MSR for the OS use. I'm not sure, but I think it has a lot to do with multiple OS setups, otherwise it is not used.

The Boot Manager (bootmgr) is what the BIOS is looking for to start Windows 10.

This is what is confusing about your system shown above. You have 3 partitions, all after the OS partition, that contain the bootmgr.
These could have been created in your attempts to rebuild the boot manager with startup repair, but I am not sure.

You also have a UEFI laptop with Windows 10 on a MBR disk, which is not normal.

Let me see if I can find someone that knows more about this than me.

I just noticed in your 2nd post:
"No, not running that was the plan to reinstall windows. "

Are you planning to clean install Windows 10? If so then all of this is moot.
In a clean install you can wipe the partition clean and the Windows installer will create the entire disk structure you need.
The only chore then is to backup/recover any personal data before wiping the disk.

Open an admin command prompt and enter following commands

Code:

disk
list disk

If under 'GPT' there is a '*' it means the disk is using GPT.
this way we can find out if we're dealing with GPT or MBR.