Gpt to MBR conversion

[tom42]

I bought several used Hitachi 500 gb drives that are GPT. I plan to use these on Win XP 64 bit machines.
Although they accept data and function well, I cannot find a way to format them into MBR drives that I can boot using xp.
I even tried installing windows xp as a new install, and I geta message that it can't install to a GPT drive.
Any help will be greatly appreciated.
tomggraham@verizon.net

 

[dariens007]

well i dont think you have to put your personal email up on forums for help. we'd help anyway you dont want people you know spamming and whatnot....

well anyway i use a free partitoin manager called gpart

http://gparted.sourceforge.net/download.php

download the bootable cd, burn to cd and such. now in changing from gpt to mbr for win xp for that harddrive i would not convert anything. in my experience it just causes problems. i would "blank" the harddrive, removing all partitoins and formatting and start over and format it properly to mbr for win xp

 

[RealBeast]

I would attach them to a machine that has a windows installation, run diskpart in an elevated command prompt and then type:

diskpart
list disk
select disk n (where n is the 500GB disk and it should be listed as online, if not the next command would be online disk)
clean



That will leave you an unallocated disk that XP can use for the install.

 

[dariens007]

well i'll add more detail basically you want to do this

Launch GParted on the disk.
If any partitions are mounted (as indicated by a lock or key icon), unmount them.
Select Device->Create Partition Table.
Click Apply.
The disk should now use MBR. You can also create partitions within GParted, if you like; however, the Windows installer can do this automatically if you prefer.

MAKE SURE WHEN you are unmounting and formating the harddrive it is the correct one. to make it easier. only have the harddrive you want to format to MBR plugged it and no other to make sure you get the right one. my suggestion.

 

[tom42]

Thanks for the reply. I have downloaded the file
gpartid-live-0.20.0-2-i486.iso
but how do I burn it to a cd?
I have burnaware Free which offers several options on how to burn it but none seem to give a bootable CD. Do I need to convert or unzip this file first?
Sorry but I'm not that well versed on computers, just enough to be dangerous.

 

[dariens007]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bN-J8flkogg

 

[tom42]

Got it working. I used the diskpart command and then copied my boot disk to the Hitachis using xxclone. Quicker than installing Win XP on all of them. I just delete what I don't need on them.

Is there a site listing all the commands such as Diskpart that are available in Win XP?

Thanks, Dariens007 and RealBeast for your help.

 

[RealBeast]

Yes, take a look at THIS site for Windows 7, which is very similar to what is available in XP. It has every available command and syntax for each command.

 

[tom42]

Thanks very much. An amazing site.