Coming up
we'll show you the new MBR2GPT disk conversion tool
that's part of the Windows 10 Creators Updates.
We'll show you how you can safely convert a Windows 10 machine
from legacy BIOS to UEFI disk partitioning.
And how you can automate the conversion as part of your in-place upgrade process
from Windows 7 to Windows 10,
all without having to move your data off the disk.
Windows 10 includes a number of important security features such as
Secure Boot which protects the startup process from malicious software.
Device Guard which gives you advanced controls for application access.
And Credential Guard which helps prevent pass-the-hash attacks.
But to get the benefits of these features
you need a device which supports the Unified Extensible Firmware Interface.
Aka UEFI.
If you're not familiar with UEFI,
it's an interface between the operating system and the platform firmware.
it replaces BIOS which has been around for decades and has many limitations.
And using the UEFI means faster startup, shut down, sleep and resume times.
To make the shift to UEFI
the best option is to deploy Windows 10 and UEFI mode from the get-go.
But, if you have already deployed Windows 10 in BIOS mode
on UEFI capable machines,
or if you're looking to do an in-place upgrade from Windows 7
there are two things you have to do to adopt UEFI.
First you need to convert to disk from using the Master Boot Record partition style
or MBR
to using the GUID partition table partition style.
Or GPT
which is required to run Windows in UEFI mode.
Next you need to reconfigure your firmware from BIOS mode to UEFI mode
either using tools from the PC manufacturers
or changing the settings manually in the firmware menu.
MBR2GPT is available with the Creator's Update for Windows 10
and the Windows pre-installation environment.
Let me explain how the conversion works.
The tool enables partition style conversion in minutes
and is a non-destructive process.
In the past you would have to spend hours backing up your data
to another location,
repartition the disk,
reinstall Windows and then restore the data.
With MBR2GPT
the conversion is done by applying the GPT components
to an MBR disk without modifying the existing partitions
and file systems
allowing the data to remain intact.
First let's look at how we can use the tool on a system that's already running Windows 10.
Here's the machine that I've been using for sometime
and it's personalized.
And in disk management
let's look at the properties of the system disk
and under volumes
we can see that the system disk is currently using the Master Boot Record partitioning style.
To perform the conversion,
I've booted the same system into Windows PE.
The MBR2GPT tool is located under the system32 directory
and you can see the usage information with a command line help option.
In this case, everything checks out.
But, if the disk didn't meet requirements
for example maybe the disk was already GPT ,
the tool would return an error.
Next I'm going to actually convert the disks using the convert option.
This will typically shrink the Windows Partition
and create a new system partition in the freed up space.
Let's take off the conversion from MBR2GPT.
As you can see here,
the conversion takes only a few seconds
compared to hours if I had gone with the wipe and reinstall approach.
With a disk converted to GPT,
the next step is to change the firmware mode
by rebooting the system into the firmware settings menu.
In this example, I need to change the firmware option from Legacy only
to Pure UEFI.
But the settings will vary by PC manufacturer and even by machine models.
Now I've booted the machine back into Windows 10.
Notice that my files and customizations have not changed
and that's because the conversion is non-destructive.
But if I look at disk management,
I can see the disk has actually been converted to GPT.
And system information also shows that Windows is now booted in UEFI mode
and secure boot is enabled.
Next, let's look at how we can automate the disk conversion
as part of your windows 7 to Windows 10 in-place upgrade.
The MBR2GPT conversion tool
can be integrated with task sequence based deployment tools
such as System Center Configuration manager
under Microsoft deployment toolkits.
In this case we use MDT
and look at the steps added to an upgrade task sequence.
After the upgrading operating system phase,
we've added a task group called "Convert"
which does a few things.
First it runs a script that enables UEFI only mode in the firmware
which is needed for secure boot to work.
Then in the convert MBR2GPT task,
the MBR2GPT tool is run from within windows 10
using the converts and allow FullOS options.
And finally
in the finish action step,
we reboot the machine once the conversion is done.
Now let's move to our windows 7 machine
and run the task sequence we just looked at.
Again in disk management,
I can see that the disk is currently using MBR partition style.
Next we will kick off the deployment wizard.
We will select the task sequence we looked at earlier.
Here I've predefined a password
and in this case I'm not going to enable BitLocker.
And finally, we'll begin the upgrade.
This would take a few minutes
and we upgrade our system to Windows 10 and run our three custom task.
With the Machine upgraded to Windows 10,
let's look at disk management again.
Here we can see that disk was successfully converted to GPT.
And in system information,
we can see that Windows 10 is now booting in UEFI mode
and secure boot is enabled.
A couple of things to keep in mind when using MBR2GBT.
If you're converting a disk with BitLocker enabled,
make sure that you suspend protection first.
And to resume protection after conversion,
you need to remove the existing protectors and recreate them.
NBR disks can have at most four primary partitions.
So the disk you want to convert should have up to three partitions
so that the tool can create a a new UEFI system partition.
Also, while you can run the tool from the full Windows 10 environment
and convert the disk it's booted from,
you may encounter problems due to interferences from other other applications.
As such, we recommend running the tool offline from windows PE
You can learn more about how the tool works
and how to troubleshoot issues at the link below.
We hope this overview of the new disc conversion tool helps you harness the benefits of UEFI faster.
Keep checking back to Microsoft Mechanics
for the latest updates for Windows management and deployment.
Thanks for watching.
Microsoft Mechanics