MBR to GPT for Windows 11

Like many others, I'm now looking at an upgrade path to Windows 11 so I need to change my boot drive from MBR to GPT.

I have successfully changed my non-boot disks from MBR to GPT, easy enough with disk manager convert to gpt option and then just copy all files back.

My concern now is the bootable MBR disk - If I backup using paragon and then use diskpart to "clean" and "convert gpt" how do I then create a
partition which will boot the C: drive contents restored by paragon (I'm assuming here that only C: gets restored, I don't want to restore the other MBR? volumes?

Any advice appreciated, I'm not confident with this stuff...

Thanks

Steve

Hello and welcome to the forums!
You can't just convert bootable MBR drive to GPT -- different boot files are used. It'd be easier to reinstall Windows from scratch.
If really needed, you can check if the following workaround will help:
1 Back up C: and other partitions (if any) from that MBR disk
2 Erase the disk and convert to GPT
3 Install Windows (same version as was installed) to GPT disk
4 Restore C: and other partitions so that they will erase clean C: partitions of newly-installed Windows.

Many Thanks for the reply, This is a real pain for me as a I have a few PCs in this situation.

Step 4 threw me a little since I'm not quite sure what's in the other partitions and if they affect MBR/GPT : Restore C: and other partitions so that they will erase clean C: partitions of newly-installed Windows.

I can see that I want to restore C:, but the others? - Just double checking here because of my own lack of clarity on this, apologies.

Thanks
Steve

I think you don't need Partition Manager just use mbr2gpt tool from Microsoft : https://www.windowscentral.com/how-c...efi-windows-10

This worked well for me,

However in my case I ended up with unallocated space on the right side of my disk (see screenshot) and I can't seem to find a way to merge the unallocated space together with C:

Attachment 845

Anyone knows if Partition Manager can help merge [1] and [4]?

Thanks for the mbr2gpt tip, worked ok for me. I ended up with a new E: system reserved drive, but I just took away the drive letter assignment in disk manager.

I'm still not clear on whether I can now restore an old paragon backup from when it was MBR... but at least the conversion is now done.

Thanks!


Steve