[lug] Conversion of BIOS Disks to UEFI (non-destructive)

[Zan Lynx]

On 4/25/19 4:02 PM, D. Stimits wrote:
> Basically, I know the UEFI partition has a protective MBR as a means of
> preventing some non-UEFI software from destroying a disk it thinks is
> empty. This is good, as it means the front matter of a BIOS disk has the
> same structure (though there might be edits needed to that front
> matter). There is also extra space at the start (beyond the protective
> MBR) used to hold firmware (I'm not sure of the size, but I think it
> might be roughly 2MB...I currently have only old style BIOS and can't look).

The problem is that the GPT (what you called UEFI) partition style is a
lot bigger than a MBR. In order to convert a MBR into a GPT you'd almost
certainly have to move or delete the first partition.

If you were willing to copy all of the partition data as you described
then the easy way would be to take a new hard drive and create a new GPT
with partitions for each of the old drive's partitions. Then you could
block copy with dd or other tool the old partitions into the new partitions.

I would consider $100 for a new hard drive much cheaper than potentially
losing all of my data.

But anyway, sure, if you are willing to move around a bunch of stuff to
make the room, you could convert a MBR to a GPT.

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