Converting to GPT from MBR
 

GPT seems to be the future for disks so I've been doing a bit of research on it.

Am just a home user who doesn't run a huge server environment with Petabyte-sized requirements but I do like to keep my hand in on a few distros that I like.

I have noticed that many recent releases look for a GPT in order to install and fail installation if it's not available.

Here there are two 300GB SATA Disks which use MBR and LILO to boot any of four installations, Slackware 14.2, Debian 9.8, Kubuntu 18 or Fedora KDE 34.

Is there an easy way that is safe to move everything to GPT from MBR, what are the dangers and is it worth doing the switch?

Any caveats or gotchas most welcome to hear about.

:study:

That's just laziness by the devs. You could try raising a bug against the installer devs for each distro, but I wouldn't hold any hope of being listened to. What might be an option is to use one disk as gpt for the system (boot and root) and leave your data on MBR on the other disk if you really have to.
gpt is essentially only needed for big (> 4T) disks, and to some extent UEFI firmware systems - Windows 10 made people assert this was a requirement, but it actually isn't. I haven't used new disks as MBR in years - go with the flow.
If you have been researching you must have stumbled on Rod Smith' pages - read them carefully, no-one here can offer better advice. He has a tool that will do the conversion, but read the caveats. I would doubt lilo can handle it but maybe elilo (?) - dunno, haven't gone near lilo in over a decade.
Note my sigline.

Not sure if there is a linux mbr2gpt sort of program. Think windows can do it.

The safe correct way is or was full backup. Convert disk. Then install. Might have to fix a few issues.

GPT is the future. UEFI is too.

GPT has many advantages over MBR but there would have to be a reason to convert. There is a hybrid deal that was around for a bit. On a new install of a modern distro, I'd use GPT if it offered it.

Thanks syg00.

Am having a read of Rod Smith's pages on GPT & MBR. This technical stuff is a fascinating analysis about how disks work and are internally organised nowadays.

I am much obliged to you, sir.

:study::hattip:

the conversion itself is not that difficult: https://www.explorelinux.com/convert...-gpt-on-linux/