new laptop: Is it possible to migrate OS from SSD to HDD (yes to HDD)

Hi,
I recently bought an MSI GL62 6QF laptop and unfortunately although it is an excellent laptop it has some limitation that might urge me to return it

system:
128 GB SSD in M.2 PCI-e (Windows pre-installed here)
1 TB HDD


If you could help me I would like to know the following:
- since I have to use Full Disk Encryption (TrueCrypt/VeraCrypt which require MBR) for my needs is there any way to migrate the OS to the hdd and not use the SSD at all?
- what I want do in order to use the laptop is to
1. use MBR and not GPT for the hdd
2. migrate Win10 to hdd
If the migration makes an exact copy maybe I'll have to

1. do the migrate first
2. convert GPT to MBR in hdd second


I understand this may be an unusual request for help but I really like the build quality of this laptop and would like to keep it instead of returning it.

What I am thinking so far is:

- set BIOS to legacy boot and turn safe boot off.
- Use Minitool Partition Wizard to convert hdd to MBR from GPT
- Use Minitool Partition Wizard with the Migrate OS option from SSD to HDD

Unfortunately hdd has some hidden partition BIOS_RVY which I guess will be lost

Is there any reason that the BIOS might not see the HDD as a boot device? (right now it is not listed, I thought that it is because it has no OS but that seems strange..)

Any other ideas? (or other tool to do all this..)

OP....have you seen this.....

TrueCrypt

@dalchina
SSDs and TrueCrypt or similar software are not a good mix to my knowledge for FDE.. Degradation of the SSD is faster..

Plankton said:

OP....have you seen this.....
TrueCrypt

:)

I have. There are other alternatives from TrueCrypt sources like VeraCrypt that continue the work.

dalchina said:

Hi, thanks for the thought. Opinions vary - technical discussion here:
Can TrueCrypt encrypt SSDs without performance problems? - Information Security Stack Exchange

Any form of encryption inevitably requires more reading and writing.. actually I use Truecrypt on one volume on my HDD, not my SSD.
And then you have to consider that earlier concerns about SSD lifetime seem to have been overtaken by advances in the technology.
OS-related activity results in far more reads and writes to my SSD than me accessing my Truecrypt volume.

Interesting - but older- comment here about Truecrypt and whole SSD encryption, starting with Bitlocker. But many of these articles are older, and there's a certain amount of mythology about SSDs from their earlier years.
windows - Bitlocker Performance Impact on SSD - Super User

True.. You have a point..


Thank you all for replying..

I believe I'm in a dead end here.. Unfortunately Microsoft doesn't help either since the 1511 Win10 update software like Veracrypt or Truecrypt have a problem and in order to do the OS update you have to decrypt the system drive -> do the update -> encrypt from scratch..
Bitlocker is not available in Home edition.. and I'm back to 0

It is supposed to be supported
VeraCrypt - Documentation

VeraCrypt can currently encrypt the following operating systems (UEFI is supported only on 64-bit systems starting from Windows 8):

but not without problems https://sourceforge.net/p/veracrypt/...5b859040/#2757

it might be just out of beta.. VeraCrypt / Tickets / #36 ANy chance of GPT partition support?

Still since it's so fresh doesn't seem like a good idea than the tested good old MBR