Convert USB stick from GPT to MBR. Convert USB stick from MBR to GPT.
In my backup software I had the problem, that I could not create a bootable media. The USB drive used GPT as partition style, but the software wanted to have the old MBR format in order to support BIOS as boot format as well.
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Disk management
My first approach was to take a look at the disk management. Normally there is an option to convert the partition style. However, the option is missing for USB thumb drives. It is available for USB drives with hard disks and SSD.
Conversion with Rufus
There are several options to convert the partition style. One option found on the internet was using “diskpart”. Since I did not want to fiddle around with the command line, I found the option to use Rufus. You can download the portable software from the homepage.
After starting the software we select the device (note that the content will be deleted), then for boot selection we choose “Non bootable”. After that we can also set the partition scheme. We can choose MBR or GPT.
We then start the process. After the operation, we have a few autorun files on the drive, but we can simply delete these using Explorer.
A look at the disk management shows that we are now using the other partition style.
