How to Convert External Hard Drive to GPT Disk?

Why should you convert external hard drive to GPT disk?

The hard drive can be divided into MBR and GPT. The MBR is the abbreviation of master boot record, which starts the standard BIOS partition table, supports up to 2TB volume capacity. It only supports up to 4 primary partitions, which means if you want to create more partitions for storing different files when it already has 4 primary partitions, you have to convert one primary partition to an extended partition.

While, the GPT, GUID partition table disk, use a unified extensible firmware interface (UEFI), supports disk more than 2TB, and you can have more than four primary partitions on the GPT disk.

Why should you convert an external hard drive to GPT? Many users want to have more partitions to store different files. Thus, they want to convert their external hard drive to GPT so that they can create partition more flexible. There is another situation that users have to convert the external hard drive to GPT. Sometimes, users may find that their 3TB or 4TB external hard drive only showed 2TB, users only convert it into a GPT disk to make full use of the external hard drive. And if users want a portable Windows 11 USB, they can choose to create a Windows 11 to Go USB to enjoy Windows 11 on any PC.

Convert external hard drive to GPT with Disk Management

Figure out why you need to convert the external hard drive to GPT, you need to know how to do it. The Windows OS has a built-in tool named Windows Disk Management. You can use it to convert your external hard drive to GPT.

Plugin the empty external hard drive and make sure it can be detected by the computer. Open the Disk Management. Right-click the external hard drive, select “Convert to GPT Disk” and follow the hints to convert the external hard drive to GPT.

Note: To change a master boot record disk into a GUID partition table disk with Windows Disk Management, you need to back up or move the data on the external hard drive first. Because it can only convert an empty MBR disk to GPT, otherwise, you’re unable to convert the disk to GPT using the Windows tool.

Convert external hard drive to GPT without destroying any data by using AOMEI Partition Assistant

AOMEI Partition Assistant is a good software that can convert MBR to GPT without destroying any data. Even there are many data on the external hard drive, you can convert it to GPT, which breaks out the limitation of the Windows built-in tool. You can follow the steps below.

Step1. Install and launch AOMEI Partition Assistant, you will see its main interface. Right-click the removable disk and select “Convert to GPT Disk”.

Step2. Then, it will pop out a window to ask whether you want to convert MBR to GPT disk, click OK.

Step3. It will back to the main interface, and disk 2 has already been marked as GPT. Then, click Apply at the toolbar to submit the operation.

After converting the external hard drive to GPT, you can also use this software to manage your hard drive, such as create a partition, resize a partition, delete a partition, format partition, etc. You can even use it to move OS to the new hard drive. If you only need the basic functions, you can download its free edition. The good news is that the AOMEI Partition Assistant is also suitable for Windows Server users. If you are a Windows Server user, the AOMEI Partition Assistant Server is suitable for you.