Fixed- Windows Cannot Be Installed To This Disk. The Selected Disk is of The GPT Partition Style
In this tutorial you will learn the fixes and as well as the reasons of the two most common error messages “1. Windows Cannot Be Installed To This Disk. The Selected Disk is of The GPT Partition Style” and “2. Windows cannot be installed to this disk. The selected disk is not of the GPT partition style” while installing windows 8/10.
If you want to know the fixes for the above errors scroll down and leave this section, this section is intended for those who want to know why they are getting the above errors.
There are two most widely used partition styles supported by all modern systems, MBR (Master boot Record) and GPT (GUID Partition Table).
MBR (Master Boot Record) was introduced with DOS 2.0 by IBM in 1983 an PC manufacturers started using MBR with BIOS. BIOS stands for basic input output system and it is responsible for ensuring proper functioning of system.
Up till 2006 all PC manufacturers used BIOS with MBR partition style which had certain limitations like MBR does not support hard drives more than 2 TB and allows only four partitions. A system with BIOS cannot boot from a 3 TB hard drive and 3 TB hard drives are now common.
To overcome these limitations of MBR partition system, PC manufacturers agreed on using a new low level interface which is UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) in 2007. Like BIOS UEFI has no limitations of using specific size of hard drives.
UEFI use GPT partition style which supports hard drives of more than 2.2 TB capacity, theoretically GPT supports 9.4 zettabytes hard drives.
In short all the modern systems ships with UEFI and some with both UEFI and BIOS for backward compatibility. It is up to user to choose UEFI or BIOS to boot their system in.
1.Fix for Windows Cannot Be Installed To This Disk. The Selected Disk is of The GPT Partition Style:
While installing windows if you face this error message, it indicates your system is booted using the legacy BIOS, and BIOS works only with MBR partition scheme.
You need to restart your system and enable UEFI Boot. On system restart press F2, F10, Delete or Esc button depending on your system manufacturer to enter low level settings and choose UEFI boot type from the boot menu.
If your windows installation media supports UEFI then windows installation will start smoothly on the reboot after selecting UEFI boot type.
If windows installation does not start with UEFI Boot enabled, it means your windows installation media does not support UEFI.
Now you have two options, first option is that you need to buy a new windows DVD or follow this tutorial how to create windows 10 bootable USB with UEFI Boot.
If you already have windows ISO image file on your hard drive. The second option is to convert your hard drive partition scheme to MBR if you want to continue with BIOS, before changing your hard drive partition scheme you need to back up all your data .
2. Fix for Windows cannot be installed to this disk. The selected disk is not of the GPT partition style:
If you got the above error message, it indicates that your system in booted in UEFI mode. UEFI mode works with GPT partition scheme and your systems current partition scheme is MBR. To continue with installation of windows you have got two options.
- You need to reboot, press F2, F10, Delete or Esc button, go to boot menu and select Legacy Boot type (legacy BIOS-compatibility mode) from the boot menu.
With Legacy BIOS compatibility mode enabled, your windows installation will run smoothly.
2. You can use MBR2GPT.exe for converting your system partition scheme to GPT, this tool will leave your data alone (will not format or delete your data) and change your hard drive partition scheme.
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