Arch Linux

mrconfused

Member

Registered: 2023-06-17

Posts: 38

New PC does not support MBR. Try change to UEFI or Fresh Arch install?

I rather stupidly did not check if MBR was still supported, so I need to change my (externally SSD installed) Arch install to UEFI.

I have looked at some guides for changing MBR to UEFI and it seems quite involved, and as a novice Arch user I worry about messing it up, even with backups.

Would I be better off just creating a fresh Arch install, reinstalling packages and copy my /home over?

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 25,223

Re: New PC does not support MBR. Try change to UEFI or Fresh Arch install?

From a "disk" perspective all you need for UEFI is an ESP and a (potentially, depends on the main board, but is likely to be needed) GPT partition table. You can transform a MBR table to GPT without loss, and you'll need to make some space for a FAT partitioned ESP -- all of which can be done relatively safely. I'd suggest you use a Gparted live disk, as it makes this process visually trivial and should generally do all the necessary operations in the correct order.