I recently converted my storage from MBR to GPT with data retained.
MBR2GPT makes gpt conversion of system disks easy and reliable. All you have to do is start it from the installation media or other pe and enter a few lines of command. No files were lost.
There are many third-party disk utility software that have the ability to convert to GPT without evacuating the data. However, there seems to be a small problem when using these.
I converted my data drive to GPT with those software (this process is not mandatory. I just ran it because I was bored) and when I could no longer write backups to this data drive, I found out about it.
Disks processed with those software can have glitches in the code that describes the partitions.
In my case, the problem was caused by a blank partition name description.
I also found other cases online where the partition name description was garbled.
I also found a small program(
Download GPT fdisk for free. GPT fdisk is a disk partitioning tool loosely modeled on Linux fdisk, but used for modifying GUID Partition Table (GPT) disks. The related FixParts utility fixes some common problems on Master Boot Record (MBR) disks.
sourceforge.net
) that checks and fixes these, but I wasn't confident in using it, so I finally solved my problem by saving my data and reformatting it.
no need for 3rd party utils windows has it built in
MBR2GPT.exe /validate /disk:0. This will run the MBR2GPT tool on your OS disk to validate that it is ready for the conversion.
MBR2GPT.exe /convert /disk:0