Clone/System transfer from one PC to another MBR to GPT, BIOS to UEFI

SIW2 said:

I think it cant find an active partition.

Use aomei to convert the two logical drives to primary and make sure the 100 mb is set as active.

( It also gets upset if there isnt a bcd entry pointing at the os partition.)

The you can try mbr2gpt and see what it says. You dont need to use the installation media for any of this. 1904v3 contains aomei and mbr2gpt.

The AOMEI you have on your boot disk is the free conversion and the conversion to primary requires the pro version. However, I have a bootable pro version of EaseUS Partition Master. I booted in, attempted to convert to primary and it error'd stating cannot convert a system or bootable partition.

SIW2 said:

TRY diskgenius in that case

Is it on your bootable or do I need to download it?

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JDubbedN said:

Is it on your bootable or do I need to download it?

I couldn't find it on your bootable so I went ahead and installed diskgenius and I am creating the bootable USB. Acquiring WinPE file now...

See my post above yours if you want it all on the same usb.

Otherwise you can make a separate diskgenius winpe thing.

DG displays the disk and partitions at the top pane. rt click the partition and select convert to primary

You have to click Save All at the top left for it to make the changes to the partition table.

SIW2 said:

See my post above yours if you want it all on the same usb.

Otherwise you can make a separate diskgenius winpe thing.

DG displays the disk and partitions at the top pane. rt click the partition and select convert to primary

You have to click Save All at the top left for it to make the changes to the partition table.

I went ahead and created the Disk genius WinPE but thanks for the alternative. The 100mb was already marked as active. The main partition I marked as primary and saved it. Rebooted and tried mbr2gpt again. This time I got a different message.

"Cannot find OS partition for disk 0"

I double checked that disk 0 was the NVME using list disk in disk part and it is. So now the OS partition isn't being found. Very interesting. Any suggestions from here?

The bcd entry needs to point at the os partition.

1. use aomei to assign a letter to the 100mb - e.g. Z, click Apply. Leave aomei open.

2. then use nt6repair Fix letter section , select the windows partition in the dropdown and click FIX.




3. then in the autoboot repair select system partition Z: and windows partition in the dropdowns and click Apply.



4. In aomei, remove letter Z, click Apply.

You should now have 2 primary partitions, the 100mb ,marked active with no drive letter - and the windows partition which does have a letter in its registry. The bcd entry on the 100mb should now be pointing at the windows partition.

Hopefully mbr2gpt will have what it needs.

SIW2 said:

The bcd entry needs to point at the os partition.

1. use aomei to assign a letter to the 100mb - e.g. Z, click Apply. Leave aomei open.

2. then use nt6repair Fix letter section , select the windows partition in the dropdown and click FIX.




3. then in the autoboot repair select system partition Z: and windows partition in the dropdowns and click Apply.



4. In aomei, remove letter Z, click Apply.

So interesting results here. I performed everything as stated, rebooted and I got the Windows is repairing disk...then computer rebooted and the NVME booted into the Intel NUC cloned OS, BEFORE I performed the MBR to GPT conversion. So somehow I am able to boot an MBR when supposedly the BIOS doesn't support it? Maybe all that magic you just had me do allowed me to bypass the BIOS restrictions? I am so confused now. Should I still attempt the mbr2gpt conversion?

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JDubbedN said:

So interesting results here. I performed everything as stated, rebooted and I got the Windows is repairing disk...then computer rebooted and the NVME booted into the Intel NUC cloned OS, BEFORE I performed the MBR to GPT conversion. So somehow I am able to boot an MBR when supposedly the BIOS doesn't support it? Maybe all that magic you just had me do allowed me to bypass the BIOS restrictions? I am so confused now. Should I still attempt the mbr2gpt conversion?

I just double checked using EaseUS Partition Master and the NVME partition is still MBR. That is crazy.

So somehow I am able to boot an MBR when supposedly the BIOS doesn't support it?

That is interesting. Some of the expensive nvme disks contained oproms that could do that. The old 850 pro for example. Or maybe it is something in your bios that isn't documented.

SIW2 said:

That is interesting. Some of the expensive nvme disks contained oproms that could do that. The old 850 pro for example. Or maybe it is something in your bios that isn't documented.

Are all the partitions ntfs ?

Yes, confirmed NTFS. And still have the 3 partitions. System Reserved, OS and Unallocated.

I went ahead and attempted mbr2gpt validate and it still failed saying no OS found. I am wondering if at this point I need to convert to GPT. But since the BIOS apparently doesn't support MBR...it might cause a problem in the future if it is not GPT? I checked the BIOS for the NVME and it's listed there stating "Windows Boot Manager (NVME...) so it says it's UEFI even though its...not? Haha. Any suggestions on if/how I should proceed?