I want to switch from MBR (BIOS) to GPT (UEFI)

Hello everyone,

I have Samsung EVO 860 SSD, I have Windows 10 and partition style is MBR, while my second HDD I bought few days ago is in GPT and his size is 2TB

The reason I want to switch my OS and my main SSD where the OS is located in general to GPT is that I heard it's better due to the some features such as the secure boot, faster boot, et cetera.

I'm here to ask for help, and to seek for a way to do it without having to completely re-install Windows and without data loss, if that's possible I would like to hear your opinions and suggestions.

Kind regards!

I really appreciate your fast response guys, I already saw those threads but I just decided to however open a topic to discuss about whether is it worth switching from MBR to GPT partition style, also, how can I find if my motherboard supports UEFI and how do I enable UEFI?

I have B450 Aorus PRO motherboard and on the next link I found out that under the BIOS section, it is written: https://i.imgur.com/ItmqD3f.png

Does that mean that my motherboard supports it? And what are your thoughts on switching from MBR to GPT, are there any benefits in the performance at all? Or it is just the fast boot and such things?

ashramnavivi said:

I'm here to ask for help, and to seek for a way to do it without having to completely re-install Windows and without data loss, if that's possible...

It's only possible if your motherboard supports UEFI, if so Brink's tutorial will work.

If not, then your system drive must stay as MBR. A legacy bios MBR install does however support any or all your other drives being GPT. You don't have to convert you system drive to GPT, it will be able to use your GPT second drive anyway.

I converted my MBR HDD to GPT using MiniTool Partition Wizard today, and EFI folder showed up on my MBR SSD's C: drive, as seen on this screenshot: https://i.imgur.com/FLGdzM5.png

Not sure if it actually got created after I converted my HDD to GPT, or it created before, but my SSD is currently MBR while my HDD is GPT

ashramnavivi said:

I converted my MBR HDD to GPT using MiniTool Partition Wizard today, and EFI folder showed up on my MBR SSD's C: drive, as seen on this screenshot: https://i.imgur.com/FLGdzM5.png
Not sure if it actually got created after I converted my HDD to GPT, or it created before, but my SSD is currently MBR while my HDD is GPT

It was created before. Your screenshot says it was last modified on 26 May.



But I'm not sure what created it or what it is for. My systems with a clean install of a UEFI/GPT Windows do not have that EFI folder. What they do have is a 100MB Fat32 EFI partition of the same GPT drive as the C: partition..

Few days ago I dealt with my old HDD that was MBR as well, I never had a GPT drive, pretty sure the folder wasn't created on 26th of May, but however, I guess it's just there for my data HDD which I transformed into GPT just a few hours ago, and I disconnected it to test if my SSD is independent from other drives and it fully is and can work without it but the EFI folder is still there, however, I would most likely turn my SSD into GPT as well but I would need to change from Legacy to UEFI, I'm pretty sure that my motherboard supports UEFI too, as shown in the post and screenshot above!

ashramnavivi said:

...I'm pretty sure that my motherboard supports UEFI too, as shown in the post and screenshot above!

I'm not sure the post or screenshot proves that one way or the other. You can find out by entering the bios at power up (usually by pressing the F2 key) and looking at the options available.

Unless you have a drive larger than 2 TB or you want more than 4 partitions on the drive or you really, really want to learn how to manually set up system drives, it is not worth messing with your working system if you don't know exactly what you are doing and have the resources available to fix everything that could go wrong.