Changing Boot Drive

S

SeattleSam

Member
Here's what I get while trying to change the boot drive:

"An attempt was made to change the boot partition to a logical drive, which is not allowed. The boot partition must be a primary partition.

Please either select a different drive or convert the select partition to primary first, then try again.

The GPT drive I'm trying to change it to is already a primary.

How can I get around this?
 
a) that drive must have a drive letter
b) GPT drive must be converted to MBR using any partition or disk manager, also see THIS
c) Read the posts "stickied" at the top of this section.
 
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Thanks for your replies. Here are my replies to each of your suggestions:

a) Sorry for the misnaming. The selected drive to use as a boot drive was a partition, not a drive. And it does have a drive letter.

b) I have a small problem with your suggestion to convert the drive to MBR, because doesn't that conversion risk data loss? It will most definitely risk partition loss, because an MBR drive can only have four primary partitions. That drive has six. Maybe that's not really a problem if it will convert the other partitions to logical, but that seems messy. The thing I'm really concerned with is the data loss.

c) It's possible I posted this to the wrong area of the forum but I didn't see anywhere else it was addressed. What does "stickied" mean? Do you mean the drop-down menus?
 
OK change the partitions to MBR or at least the one you intend to boot first. If that is too risky then I would leave things as they are.
Look at the top of this page for the Forums tab and click it. Then click EasyBCD Support and read the first few articles or posts as they may be of help.
Are you using EasyBCD?
 
I don't believe you can convert individual partitions between MBR or GPT. My understanding is you must convert the entire drive.

In answer to are you using EasyBCD, the answer is yes. I've been using EasyBCD since it was first developed many years ago. I may even be Mr. Qudsi's first donator. I am posting on the forum tab "EasyBCD Support" because after searching through earlier posts, I haven't seen this addessed. It's very possible I missed something.
 
I'm assuming that as a GPT user, your PC is UEFI ?
If so, the ability to move the boot partiition is no longer possible because UEFI only boots from the EFI System Partition.
Under MBR, it could be moved because the MBR partition map's active flag could be switched around and that was all automated for you along with creating everything else necessary in the alternate location.
There's no active flag under UEFI and no way to move the boot files. They have to be in the EFI System partition now.
 
As much as I have read about UEFI, it continues to be a mystery to me. EFI System Partition? That's moveable, I think. Or am I misunderstanding? I'll try to be more specific: I am using an M2 stick as my primary drive. If I disconnect all the other drives, the system boots (obviously) from the M2 stick. Easy BCD works as expected. I can select to boot into any of the four partitions on that drive. But if I plug in one other drive (also GPT), the system always boots from the other drive; never the M2 drive. From what I have been led to believe, the boot drive is not changeable in this configuration. It will always be a drive other than the M2 drive, unless I convert the M2 to MBR. Maybe I'm being overcautious, but I'm really afraid to convert the whole drive to MBR. Should I be? Or should I just live with it the way it is?
 
This is going to depend on both your BIOS/firmware configuration and a few other variables, such as the nature of your boot partitions.

Most BIOS options feature a setting to determine whether the system will be booted in MBR mode, UEFI mode, or auto. Auto will generally try EFI first, and only if that fails, try MBR. MBR disks are checked for boot support according to the order specified in the boot disk priority list in your BIOS, but under UEFI mode that isn't used and instead the BIOS/UEFI has a primitive boot menu that determines which UEFI bootloader is loaded. EasyBCD can show you this hidden boot menu if you enable "verbose mode" in the settings.
 
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