Hello All. Apologies if this is the wrong forum; if so, please redirect.
In my BIOS boot-order, some devices show up twice: once as normal, and once as UEFI device; and the BIOS allows selection of either to boot from. Having done some reading, it seems as though a GPT partitioned disk still contains a traditional MBR.
Question: Is it possible to successfully boot the same disk (SSD), by either GPT or MBR (perhaps to different partition on the disk)?
Reason: I would like to selectively boot one of two different partitions on the same disk, but don't want to have to select from a boot menu at each and every boot. I would like to automatically boot every time into the first partition, unless at boot time I press the F12 key to enter the boot menu, and manually select to boot the second partition. The caveat is that the second partition should be an MBR partition for Grub4DOS.
Background (not necessary to question, but to keep on-topic): Years ago, I played around with RMPrepUSB and Grub4DOS, and came across a tutorial to create a small partition on the system's internal drive and place Grub4DOS into the partition boot record, and then use that partition to hold and boot a Clonezilla Live image (or any other image for that matter) to create a backup image of the main drive, without needing a USB stick; an idea which I liked.
So, on my numbers two and three systems (I have three desktop systems relevant here), each of which has a 120GB SATA3 SSD system disk and a 2TB data HDD, I created such a partition, so that the drive layouts are thus:
System 2:
SSD: | System Reserved | C: Window | Recovery |
HDD: | D: Data | E: Grub4DOS/Clonezilla |
System 3:
SSD: | C: Window | Recovery |
HDD: | D: Data | E: Grub4DOS/Clonezilla |
(No idea why one system has a Windows System Reserved Partition and the other does not. Both systems previously had earlier versions of Windows (7/8) when they were upgraded (by clean install) to Windows 10 years ago.)
Both systems are UEFI/GPT capable, but are configured as BIOS/MBR. Each is set to automatically boot C: on the SSD, unless F12 is used to enter the boot menu and select E: on the HDD, which boots Grub4DOS. All works fine.
I should note that I build all my systems myself, with an eye (or ear) toward silent computing, so my newest system (which is now several years old) was built with an SSD only, and no HDD. It's layout is:
System 1:
SSD: | C: Windows | Recovery | D: Data | E: for Grub4DOS/Clonezilla |
On this system, which is also configured as BIOS/MBR (though is UEFI/GPT capable), although the small partition (E:) is there, I never did get around to installing Grub4DOS/Clonezilla. And I'm not sure how I would boot it if it were there.
The SATA3 SSD on this system is 500GB (big mistake), as at the time it seemed like the Windows partition could be relatively small, and leave sufficient room for a reasonable sized data partition. Well, the Windows partition has grown and now become full, and needs to be enlarged. I have ordered a 1TB M.2 NVMe SSD, which will become my D: Data partition, and will leave plenty of room on the SATA3 SSD to enlarge the Windows partition.
My understanding is that there should be no problem in using an M.2 NVMe SSD on a BIOS/MBR-configured system (which is EUFI capable), as long as it is used only for data, and not to boot. But this still leaves the question asked at the top of this post.
Supposing that the SATA3 SSD was converted to GPT, and the system configured as UEFI to boot the Windows partition, could that same drive still be booted as MBR from the F12 boot menu? And if so, Grub4DOS could be placed in the MBR to boot E:, but would have no effect when the system was booted as GPT.
If this is a hopeless idea, don't hesitate to say so. Or any alternative solutions would be welcomed as well. But all of this is just as a matter of convenience, to have the Clonezilla Live image available on local storage, without needing a USB stick, as is also the case with the other two systems. The primary goal will be to migrate D: Data to the new M.2 SSD, and enlarge the Windows partition.
Thanks for any thoughts.