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I am installing windows 8.1 for the ASUS laptop.

I have two drive in the laptop namely:

Drive 1 : 40  GB
Drive 2 : 450 GB

At the time of installation I have formated Drive 1 which I was suppose to use for Operating System installation. After I format I am getting an error:

Error:

enter image description here

Note: After googling I came to know that I need to format whole disk and need to convert the type of disk to GPT. But I have an important data in the drive Drive 2. How to resolve this?

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3 Answers 3

Reset to default
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(Those are just two partitions on one drive.)

Converting a data disk (without an OS) to GPT is usually painless, as only the partition table (containing start & end locations) needs to be rewritten – the partitions themselves do not need to be touched at all.

On Linux the gdisk tool can be used for this.

  1. Boot a Linux CD (e.g. Ubuntu or Arch).
  2. Open a Terminal window (if the CD has a graphical interface).
  3. Run lsblk to check what disks & partitions are present.
    If you have only one, it's almost always "sda", but check anyway.
  4. If the disk is "sda", run sudo gdisk /dev/sda to run the gdisk tool.
    It will warn you about a MBR partition table and will automatically convert it to GPT.
  5. Use the p (Print) command to look at the results – if you want.
  6. Use the w (Write) command to save the changes, or q (Quit) to cancel them.
  7. Reboot.

(I think using the menu-based cgdisk would work just as well.)

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  • /added a missing sudo as gdisk must be run as root
    – grawity_u1686
    Commented Oct 21, 2015 at 10:11
  • @qasdfdsaq: Nice that it finally has a non-destructive option for that, but would you mind posting your own answer instead
    – grawity_u1686
    Commented Oct 21, 2015 at 11:18
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    @grawity in your solution will there be any data loss ?
    – Kelum
    Commented Oct 27, 2015 at 6:50
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The error you're getting is because the machine is booting to UEFI mode. You can still install Windows 8, you have a few options. Personally I would back up the data and reformat the drive. But there is third party software that can do that and retain your data as well. Following is your options:-

Reboot the PC in legacy BIOS-compatibility mode. This will allow you to build on it as is.

Format the drive GPT, if you want the data in drive 2 but don't want to do a backup (not recommended) use a third-party utility to convert the drive to GPT format.

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Reformatting the drive using a different partition style

To wipe and convert the drive by using Windows Setup

  • Turn off the PC, and put in the Windows installation DVD or USB key.
  • Boot the PC to the DVD or USB key in UEFI mode.
  • From inside Windows Setup, press Shift+F10 to open a command prompt window, or goto advance settings and select command prompt.

Open the diskpart tool:

diskpart

Identify the drive to reformat:

list disk

Select the drive, and reformat it:

select disk <disk number>
clean
convert gpt
exit

  • Close the command prompt window.

  • Continue the Windows Setup installation.

  • When choosing an installation type, select Custom. The drive will appear as a single area of unallocated space.

  • Select the unallocated space and click Next. Windows begins the installation.

This will destroy all data from your drive so to backup your data from drive 2 using command prompt to copy all the data to some external storage.

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