MSFT-reserved GPT entry in the way of a partition resize

[kangarootaco]

I have a 3TB non-bootable GPT drive with a 1TB NTFS partition at the beginning, immediately followed by a 128MiB "Microsoft reserved partition" of type "GPT Entry". I would like to stretch the 1TB partition out to 2TB, but the GPT Entry is in the way. BootIt Bare Metal 1.19 does not give me the option of sliding the GPT Entry further down to make room for the expansion of the NTFS partition--the only action available to me is to delete it. Can the GPT entry be recreated by BIBM later if I delete it? Is there any other solution? Thanks.

[kangarootaco]

Another thing: I also had a 120GB NTFS partition as the third partition, immediately following the GPT Entry. I slid that to the end of the hard drive in BIBM 1.19, which reported success. However, that partition now shows up as type "RAW" in Windows 7 (which is installed on a separate SSD) and unformatted. How can I get Windows 7 to recognize it as the NTFS partition that it could see before it was moved? Thanks.

Update: The good news is that this partition is recognized by Windows again after I slid it back to where it was originally with BIBM 1.19. So it seems that BIBM is not updating information (maybe in the GPT Entry) that Windows needs to access partitions after slides.

[DrTeeth]

On Sun, 8 Mar 2015 17:19:06 PDT, just as I was about to take a herb,
kangarootaco disturbed my reverie and wrote:

>Another thing: I also had a 120GB NTFS partition as the third partition, immediately following the GPT Entry. I slid that to the end of the hard drive in BIBM 1.19, which reported success. However, that partition now shows up as type "RAW" in Windows 7 (which is installed on a separate SSD) and unformatted. How can I get Windows 7 to recognize it as the NTFS partition that it could see before it was moved? Thanks.
>
>Update: The good news is that this partition is recognized by Windows again after I slid it back to where it was originally with BIBM 1.19. So it seems that BIBM is not updating information (maybe in the GPT Entry) that Windows needs to access partitions after slides.
>
The latest version of BIBM is 1.29a. Upgrade first *before*
troubleshooting.
--
Cheers,

DrT

** You've never known happiness until you're married;
** but by then it is too late.

[kangarootaco]

DrTeeth wrote:
>
> The latest version of BIBM is 1.29a. Upgrade first *before*
> troubleshooting.

Thanks--I upgraded to 1.29a (I didn't realize I could) and that fixed the problem of partition slides being unrecognized by Windows 7.

However, my original problem remains: How do I expand the first partition on the 3TB GPT hard drive when the "Microsoft reserved partition - GPT Entry" immediately follows it and BIBM 1.29a does not allow me to move it?

Thanks

[Brian K]

Try this. Convert the Disk to MBR. Delete the 128 MB partition. Resize your 1 TB partition to 2 TB. Convert the Disk to GPT.

[kangarootaco]

Brian K wrote:
> Try this. Convert the Disk to MBR. Delete the 128 MB partition. Resize your
> 1 TB partition to 2 TB. Convert the Disk to GPT.

That's what I've been thinking of trying (after cloning the whole HDD, of course). Though I may need to delete all partitions (after the backup) so that the GPT is put at the beginning of the dirve, ensuring that this problem does not come up again.

[Eric]

Now that you have slide your 120GiB NTFS partition (which was just following the 128MiB MRP), I suppose that you can slide this MRP?

Otherwise, then I suppose you can delete this MRP then recreate it at an other place (use 0x183 for fsid, then change the type to {E3C9E316-0B5C-4DB8-817D-F92DF00215AE}).

[kangarootaco]

Eric wrote:
> Now that you have slide your 120GiB NTFS partition (which was just
> following the 128MiB MRP), I suppose that you can slide this MRP?

No--BIBM has never given me the option to slide the MRP, no matter where the 120GiB NTFS partition is.

> Otherwise, then I suppose you can delete this MRP then recreate it at an
> other place (use 0x183 for fsid, then change the type to
> {E3C9E316-0B5C-4DB8-817D-F92DF00215AE}).

So you're saying it is safe to just delete the MRP, and then BIBM 1.29a can re-create it later in such a way that Windows 7 can recognize the partitions?

[Eric]

kangarootaco wrote:
> So you're saying it is safe to just delete the MRP, and then BIBM 1.29a can re-create
> it later in such a way that Windows 7 can recognize the partitions?
Yes, I have just done it on a Win8.1 UEFI system, and it boots fine...
After creating the partition, change the type and the flags as they were before.
But if you don't feel confortable, do a backup of the MRP with IFD before removing it.

[kangarootaco]

I cloned the hard drive in question and have been experimenting with it. The first thing I did was delete the MRP and found that Windows 7 could still see all the partitions! I chose to wipe the MRP when I deleted it so that I could be sure that Windows was not still reading information from the area of the disk where the MRP was. How is this possible when I have left the hard drive as GPT (I did not try converting it to MBR as suggested above)?