Changing BIOS from MBR to GPT

[thecompprgr]

I want to replace my 500GB HD with an 8TB HD. The issue is the BIOS must be change from MBR to GPT. Any advice as to how to do that? 

[Paul_Tikkanen]

Hi:

You can install Windows in EFI mode, and that will automatically format the drive in GPT.

To install Windows in EFI mode, boot your Windows installer from one of the EFI boot sources...EFI USB or EFI DVD.

[DGroves]

there are several commercial and free methods that will do the conversion, (use google) however most are for non server configurations so unless you have backed up the data i would not recommend this method

pauls recommendation to do a clean reinstall is highly recommended

[SDH]

Agree with all above.  A few added things:

MBR vs GPT is not a BIOS thing... it is a partition thing.  When you buy a new HDD or SSD they generally come in a "raw" state.  That is, no partition has been made.  And, no formatting has been done.

You can use the Windows Disk Management utility built into your presumed Windows OS to choose to do a MBR or GPT partitioning as the first step.  That is quick to do.  For a big drive such as your new 8TB one you need to choose GPT.  For your old HDD you could chose to partition it either MBR or GPT.  MBR tops out at a little over 2TB.

Second... We're all assuming you are not planning on having a single huge HDD in that Z420 as your boot/applications/data drive.  You would surely want to have a dedicated SSD for the OS boot and your applications, and a nice HDD for your data drive.  Both of those should be SATAIII type.  The SSD should be at least 500GB in size.  I'm biased right now towards the Intel 545s SSD family.  Samsung is excellent too.  I like the Intel SSD management software better.  Regardless, both your SATAIII SSD and new SATAIII HDD should be hooked up to the two gray bottom rear SATA ports on the motherboard.  The others are SATAII (or SAS).  You don't want to run your boot or your data drives off of anything but a SATAIII port...

Formatting... that will take some time, and you can do it ahead of time in your current build.  Once your partitioning is done then you can format... NTFS short or long.  I invest in the long type out of habit.  It "maps out" any bad sector in the process.  With a new raw big HDD I might just do the "quick" type if I was pressed for time (but I can't remember the last time I took that shortcut).

If you're already running a clean machine on a SSD and only are upgrading to a big data HDD you could choose to stick with that SSD and capture your current 500GB data drive's contents and load that over to the new HDD.

[thecompprgr]

Thank you, you cleared up a few things for me. Now I am clearer on the issues. What set me on this trek was that the 500GB C: drive is showing in the red. I got the z420 to set up as a 2019 Windows Server and added a 48TB storage drive. Before I could get it setup the 500GB C: drive went red when viewed in This PC.

I'm liking the idea of an SSD, would you suggest a 1TB or  2TB. Also, should I format the 48TB drive into smaller drives. 

[SDH]

My understanding is that red means it is getting too full, not that it is ready to fail.  Too full is not good for any drive's performance and there are analogous issues with SSDs called TRIM and over-provisioning to learn a bit about.

I'm glad we got into this... you currently are not using a SSD, and there is a whole new world of performance for you with one.  I can't think of anythng in computing that has made such a big perceptible change at such a low cost and with so little hassle.  For sure I would recommend that for you, as your applications/boot drive.

One thing I forgot to mention... for the ZX20 generation there is a plug-in HP PCIe card available, the Z Turbo Drive (ZTD generation 1) that a number of us use.  I would recommend against that because it is more "fiddly" versus using a good modern SATAIII SSD hooked up properly to one of your two SATAIII ports (those two gray ones I mentioned).  You will be up to about 95% max drive speed with that and the extra 5% is not worth the fiddle factor in my mind.  The next generation, the ZTD G2, is based on NVMe technology, but is for the ZX40 next generation of HP workstations.  Even with those I still generally stick with the same SATAIII SSD type we use in our ZX20 builds, however.  I do fiddle with that at home.

You'll be using your build is such a different fashion than I do... a dedicated 500GB SSD is all I'd think you'd need for your boot/applications purposes.  You get a small SSD speed benefit by going large... but most of that would be gotten by a 500GB SSD.  If I'm understanding correctly this build will be something you use mainly in the background, and not as your main computer.

Paul T and DGroves have more experience with your type of use I believe.   Finally, I'm guessing you might not have updated your BIOS to the latest version, and don't do that from within a Windows 10 operating system.  There is a safe way to upgrade BIOS from within BIOS and that is the only way to go if you're running W10 currently.  We can help you with that, and there are fixes and security features worth having.

Good luck on your project...