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Hi folks. A delay due to various issues.

My boss (great man) said her heard of software that converts disks from MBR to GPT with no loss of data. I downloaded one of them, MiniTool Partition Wizard Home Edition and there are several others out there.

I am going to clone my old hard drive tomorrow, then try booting drive on my new PC.

Years ago, the only way to repartition a hard drive was destructively until software like Partition Manager came around. Now you can do it in Win7 and beyond.

Cool. I am working on Step 1 in the wonderful bbearren #52 post. I did create a backup of my old HDD and it mounts beautifully. What a great feeling. I also copied the image to the 2nd partition on that disk.

Now I am using an Optiplex at work today, old BIOS and it does not recognize a GPT disk to boot. I have two blank hard drives to use as targets. What should these drives be, MBR or GPT? Or do I worry about that afterwards. Just clean, copy the image and then convert. The only thing I am restoring is the OS partition, nothing else, right?

Coochin, I have many mates in Australia, my wife and I were in Brissie last year on a business trip for her.

Thank you again!!!!!!!

Actually one Dell OEM Home Premium to a Dell Professional. Steps 1 and 2, I get a bootable home premium on a Professional CPU/motherboard (or is the new PC with a UEFI saying Professional going to balk at a hard drive saying Home Premium). What initiates the conversion to Professional, do I insert a DVD then put in a license, or does Windows pick up the Professional license in the UEFI and convert itself?

OK, time to make a step-by-step plan. I am the kind of tech who needs to write down any install steps past double-clicking on setup.exe.

You have had me learn an incredible amount, thank you for your patience. Two areas specifically, A, the differences between UEFI and MBR drives and how to get them to work. B is how and what to do to convert my existing Home Premium to Professional.

Here is my tentative step by step, please correct and amend as I am sure to be wrong somewhere.

1. Do a backup of my Windows Home Premium following directions on Post 45 on this thread. I will do this by booting up on an OptiPlex with my old HDD, backing up to another HDD connected via USB.

2. Remove old HDD and connect it via USB to another PC. “Then using DISKPART, CLEAN the old disk (this destroys all data, hence the need to make an image beforehand), then CONVERT the disk to GPT. Next, using DISKPART create a 40MB MSR partition (Microsoft System Reserved). Then, restore the drive image to the HDD.”

3. I do that with TBI. After that is done, I should be able to boot up my new PC with my old HDD. But I still have a problem because I have a Home Premium setup on a licensed Professional PC.

On the case of that PC, I do have a Windows 7 Product Key, 5 sets of 5 numbers and letters. Which means I do have the wherewithal to convert that Win7 Home Premium install to Win Professional (although I can also buy a Win7 Professional disc/license). What do I need to do to make that conversion? I have a DVD with the ISO from post 28.

Once I make that conversion, should I now be able to run Win7 Professional on my old hard drive on my new UEFI PC?

If so, I let the dust settle for a few days. I have Acronis Backup and I believe that will allow me to copy my Win7 setup from my old HDD to my SS drive, at a great gain of speed?

Like I said, if buying retail Win7 Professional makes this easier and more bulletproof, I am OK on it. Finally, just reading this over, I am just a bit leery of erasing my old HDD unless I am 1000% positive the backup image will work. I will do DISKPart and restore the image on a spare hard drive and make sure that works before I do it on my actual HDD from my old PC.

To all in the lounge, a thousand thank yous!!!!

I can’t order a license online at work. But in the meantime, I wanted to do something :). My original hard drive is partitioned as two 500MB drives. I backed up everything following program defaults but the 2nd partition, but I can always redo it Friday, now that you have been so patient.

Just a bit more confusion here. My new Dell T5610 CPU with the ss drive does have a COA sticker, Is that the same thing as a license? Or are they two different animals? I did download the ISO you posted for me earlier onto a bootable DVD. I have been told I could also buy a retail license to Win7 Professional. But do I need a license in addition to the COA?

Thank you again for your (and the others here) patience. Nothing like being made look like a complete neophyte

Happy Holidays

Great stuff.

Bbearren, I am using Image For Windows now to back up my old C drive, Win Home off an Optiplex, MBR BIOS. Do I just back up the C partition or the 40 MB Dell partition or both. Can (after the backup is done), I boot the backup drive to test that it will work?

Thanks for the help. One other wrinkle, I got home and tried booting the MBR drive as a boot drive with the BIOS set up to Legacy (or is it legacy compatibility). I get a brief BSOD (which I cannot do a freeze on to read), and then a reboot.

Now if I am going to back up the MBR drive in the spare OptiPlex, what software do you suggest I use?

But why do the upgrade? More of a curiosity question, if it does the job, I have no problem. I have nothing against Home Premium, and would have nothing against using it on the SS drive. I understand the incompatibility between MBR and GPT.

Sorry if this is not well thought out, in time crunch. And as a computer tech, I REALLY admire your ability to explain these concepts to me. Thank you.

Paul T (from Oz?), BBearren:

Thank you both for your help. You have brought up some interesting questions.

1. Both drives are Win 7, but my old drive is Win7 Home Premium, new drive is Win7 Professional. Both have OEM versions (Dell) of Win7.

Interestingly enough, I just booted my old hard drive on an Optiplex 990, a sole hard drive. Outside some driver issues, I have a working PC. Again, the idea is to get the old hard drive to boot up on the new PC, install any drivers I need, then migrate (using Acronis Disc Clone) to the solid state drive. Version of Windows should not be a factor as I am wiping the solid state drive that came with Win7 Professional installed and replacing it with Win7 Home Premium.

Yesterday at home, on my T5610 with UEFI, I could not use the old hard drive. It was not bootable as a sole hard drive and as a 2nd hard drive, it insisted that it had to be the bootable hard drive and would not boot.

But I have proven today, that the hard drive is physically and logically good. It is a 1TB Seagate Barracuda. This model is SATA with no jumpers on it.

Now in the BIOS/UEFI of the new T5610, there are settings for legacy boot and for UEFI. If I try legacy boot, I get told the solid state drive is non-bootable. Only in UEFI mode, does the ss drive boot. Both drives are recognized physically. I do not care how I boot, just as long as I can see ss drive as the 1st choice of booting, with the 2nd drive either being 2nd choice or it being seen, but non-bootable. With a BIOS, I could do it, with UEFI, I seem unable to. I need to know why the SS drive does not boot as a legacy device. If that is a fact of life, how do I manipulate the boot order via the UEFI

Finally, I have a USB docking port that can see the old hard drive.

Maybe booting up on the Optiplex today straightened whatever booting issues I had with the old hard drive and it will boot OK on my T5610. Or, thinking out loud, I can boot up with new hard drive, have old hard drive on my USB dock, use Acronis to migrate to SS drive.

Complicating this is that I do not have my OEM Win 7 Home Premium disk, it is buried somewhere.

Thoughts??? And a huge thank you in advance.

I haven’t even got there yet. I first have to be able to boot up with the hard drive from the old PC, which I have not been able to do yet. Tomorrow at work, I will test my old drive on other PCs to see if it will boot. I do have Acronis, but I have not gotten to the point where I can use it yet.

I was going to post my own thread but it looks like there are several real good brains on this one.

My Dell Studio 9000 of 4 years crashed and rather than replace motherboard, I received a new Dell T5610 with a solid state drive and a secondary 3 TB secondary drive.

All well and good but my idea was to remove the SS drive, boot up with the old drive, install drivers, get stable, then migrate boot drive to the ss drive. All drives are SATA, the small connectors.

My old boot drive is a Seagate 1TB Barracuda.

So I installed the old boot drive. Now BIOS is set for either UEFI or Legacy. If I choose UEFI, the default, the old hard drive tries to boot and can’t. There are no drivers on the drive and the connectors to the drive are connected to the SS drive at the end, old drive in middle.

If I switch to Legacy, the SS drive will not boot, neither will old drive. SS boots only when it is UEFI and only drive. BIOS/UEFI does see both drives.

Now the old boot drive seems viable to me. I connect it via a USB hub and I can see all data. If I am not mistaken, Win 7 will not boot from an external hard drive.

Will I be forced to reinstall all my apps via disks onto the new hard drive?

Thank you!!!

OK, here is a status report. As noted, this project has taken a while, I work on a help desk for NY City. I prefer not to come home and work on another PC.

I have some hardware issues that are stopping me now in my tracks. The SS hard drive that came with my PC works but the hard drive from my old PC does not boot as a primary drive. And when I try to use it as a secondary drive, it seems to always want to be the boot drive. This is getting posted in another forum.

Acronis makes a product that migrates apps from one PC to another. is it any good?

OK, loan is 60 months at 4.99% interest. Amount is 22090.89. Every loan calculator says monthly payment is 416.78 but the bill says 417.50. I also prepay which makes the statements even more bizarre.

The bill will show a breakdown between principal and interest (though this lender requires you send prepayments to a 2nd address.) But iit does not show how it applies the monthly bill.

Thank you everyone. I have used your great advice to write some notes. Installation will occur in 2-3 weeks (fingers crossed).

Both my old PC and my new PC have built-in Ethernet. I have two bays so after I boot up with the old drive (C) I can find drivers and any files in the new hard drive (D). I will go into the BIOS and have it automatically start from the old hard drive.

Thank you for the encouragement!!!!

In Outlook, you click on the description of a colum (From, date, Topic, etc) and it sorts out the e-mail based on that column. Is that possible in Gmail or do you always have to use the Search tool? I am on Gmail but that missing feature frustrates me. Help!!!