How to Convert Disk Partition Style from MBR to GPT

In general the disks in a Windows PC can have of two types of partition styles – MBR and GPT. The disks with MBR style partitioning cannot have more than four primary partitions. If you need more tan four primary partitions, then you have to use extended logical partitions in the MBR disks. But that is not always what we want. Besides MBR can handle disks of only up to 2 TB in size. For disks larger than 2 TB in capacity, you need the GPT style partitioning or you won’t be able to use all that extra space. Here is how you can convert any MBR disk into GPT style disk easily in Windows:

  1. Launch elevated command prompt. For this, you can press the Win+X key combination and select Command Prompt (Admin) from the menu that appears.
  2. Then give these commands one after another:
    diskpart
    list disk
    select disk
    clean
    convert gpt
    exit

    Here is the disk number of the disk you want to convert into GPT.Convert MBR to GPT

  3. Now you can proceed and create partitions on the disk using your favorite tool for disk partitioning like EaseUS Partition Master or Minitool Partition Wizard.

But this method does two things – it wipes all the partitions and removes all the data before converting the disk from MBR to GPT. So you may want to backup all your data before proceeding. All you have to do is copy all your important data from the target disk to any large capacity backup disk. Once the GPT conversion is complete, you can copy this data back.

This method does not work for the system disk (on which you have installed Windows operating system) if you try to use it from within Windows. If you want to convert the system disk (again the data would be lost, so backup everything and prepare for fresh installation of Windows), then you have to boot using the Windows setup disk, choose the recovery mode, launch the command prompt and then use the commands mentioned above.