Question: NOTE: I don’t know a lot about hard drives so you’re going to have to work with me here.
My question: Can I change my hard drive from GPT to MBR without losing data on it?
NOTE: there isn’t an operating system on the laptop which I’m going to do this on. I’m going to boot from a USB and try to convert it.
Answer: You can convert from GPT to MBR and MBR to GPT without data loss (I have tried that) with gdisk in Linux.
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Use at your own risk
Run command gdisk /dev/sdx with sdx as per your HDD partition
GPT fdisk (gdisk) version 1.0.1Partition table scan:MBR: MBR onlyBSD: not presentAPM: not presentGPT: not present***************************************************************Found invalid GPT and valid MBR; converting MBR to GPT format.THIS OPERATION IS POTENTIALLY DESTRUCTIVE! Exit by typing ‘q’ ifyou don’t want to convert your MBR partitions to GPT format!***************************************************************Command (? for help):
MBR to GPT
Enter w to write GPT partition on disk.
Press y to confirm your choice.
GPT to MBR
Enter r to enter in recovery and transformation options.
Enter g to convert GPT to MBR partition.
For Information
You can check table by command p.
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Warning: You will lose your boot loader (Ex. GRUB)
You can check if your partition is GPT or MBR now gdisk /dev/sdx with sdx as per your HDD partition in Partition table scan(p)