Yes. Legacy can be installed on a GPT
Partition Table disk format. By the way, it's the new standard that's gradually replacing MBR
. This format type is a better choice because it doesn't have the MBR
limits.
Read and booting to GPT Partition table drives are compatible with all Intel-based computers since 2003. It's quiet unlikely that you will find a PC that can't read the format.
Results of Copy from MBR
to GPT
:
I used dd
to copy a partition from source drive in MBR
and destination drive in GPT
partition. The only partition that was affected was the destination partition on the destination drive. All the other partitions on the destination drive remained in tact.
The destination drive was a bootable drive with a GPT
partition table. The OS on the 120G drive is Ubuntu 16.04. The drive boots in either a computer that has EFI
compatible or just legacy
. I tested booting the drive to a 10 year old Dell laptop, that only has legacy support. It booted flawlessly before the copy and after the copy to the Laptop, as my computer that has the UEFI
capability.
DD Copy Script
When I perform what I consider critical task such as this, I usually create a very easy to follow
script first and study it closely and run the critical command from the script. Also I have a huge command history buffer, and try to minimize accidentally running a wrong commandline from the history. I call the script from the directory with: ./ddcopy.sh
The script I used is:
ddcopy.sh:
#!/bin/bash
source="/dev/sdb1"
destination="/dev/sdc4"
read -p "Copy from device $source to $destination: [y/n] " -n 1 -r
if [[ $REPLY =~ ^[Yy]$ ]]
then
# do dangerous stuff
echo "..."
echo "Proceeding..."
time sudo dd if="$source" of="$destination" bs=4M status=progress ; espeak "Application Completed."
else
echo "..."
echo "Applicaton canceled."
fi
After the copy I used gparted
edit's check
command to correct the integrity of the partition. The two partition sizes were different. While the disk mounted and the data's checksum was correct, the check
corrected the size discrepancy.
Integrity of the Files verification
I ran a checksum
check of the files on the source and and the destination partitions to ensure the integrity of the files transferred. I also performed before and after checksum test of the destination drive to ensure the other partitions remained unaffected after the dd
copy.
An example of the multiple checksum
test is:
$ sudo mount /dev/sdb1 /mnt
$ md5sum /mnt/* >> ~/checklist2.chk ; espeak "Application completed"