MBR to GPT error code 215

PB442

I am trying to convert a MBR disk to GPT using AOMEI.  Disk is boot/system disk and is a Crucial 4TB SSD. I am seeking to convert as I cannot use the full disk under MBR - limited to 4 partitions and  2.2TB.

When I seek to convert I get the 215 error message.  But being a SSD defragmentation shouldn't apply.  So I assume the issue is something to do with partition size and reserve space as the second part of the error explanation is "...or reserve free space of 2GB or more for the partition, and retry".  The disk as partitioned under MBR has:
- a 100MB partition NTFS 512 B/sector \Device\HarddiskVolume1  used 17.88MB free 82.11MB
- a 2TB partition C: OS NTFS 512 B/sector \Device\HarddiskVolume2 used 1.80TB free 207.57GB
- a 576MB partition *:   NTFS 512 B/sector \Device\HarddiskVolume3 used 439.57MB free 136.43MB

grateful for any advice 

PB442

emoji should be D :  drive designation

PB442

Further to my post the logs for mgr2gpt show it fails when it cannot get volume name for the recovery boot entry. See excerpt below, (NB: I have not used the real object ID string below):

2023-01-08 14:56:07, Info BCD: Opening object {f7942351-391b-12e2-af13-ce8d487bae14}

2023-01-08 14:56:07, Error GetOSDeviceVolume: Cannot get device data for entry. Error: 0xC0000024[gle=0xc0000024]

2023-01-08 14:56:07, Error FindOSPartitions: Cannot get volume name for the recovery boot entry. Error: 0xC0000024[gle=0xc0000024]

2023-01-08 14:56:07, Error Cannot find OS partition(s) for disk 0[gle=0xc0000024]

admin

@PB442, For SSD, it still has fragments. Only the fragments haven't affected on reading files. But, when there are too many fragments, it will affect the operations of our software. You can use AOMEI Partition Assistant to defragment for the disk, and then convert it again.

PB442

Thank you for the response.  It would appear AOMEI is assessing my drive as though it uses movable heads to read spinning magnetised platters.  This seems outdated when many system disks these days are SSDs, and most new systems ship with SSDs.

I note the advice on defragging an SSD from the maker of the SSD I am using is:

Should I defrag my SSD?

The short answer is this: you don't have to defrag an SSD.

To understand why, we first need to look at the purpose of defragmenting a drive. Defragging ensures that large files are stored in one continuous area of a hard disk drive so that the file can be read in one go. Mechanical drives have a relatively long seek time of approximately 15ms, so every time a file is fragmented you lose 15ms finding the next one. This really adds up when reading lots of different files split into lots of different fragments.

However, this isn't an issue with SSDs because the seek time are about 0.1ms. You won’t really notice the benefit of defragged files — which means there is no performance advantage to defragging an SSD.

SSDs move data that's already on your disk to other places on your disk, often sticking it at a temporary position first. That's what gives defragmenting a disadvantage for SSD users. You’re writing data you already have, which uses up some of the NAND's limited rewrite capability. So, you get no performance advantage whatsoever, but you are using up some of the limited rewrite capability.

To summarize, do not defrag an SSD

The answer is short and simple — do not defrag a solid state drive. At best it won't do anything, at worst it does nothing for your performance and you will use up write cycles. If you have done it a few times, it isn't going to cause you much trouble or harm your SSD. You just don’t want this to be a scheduled, weekly type thing that takes away from the finite number of SSD rewrites. There are other ways to clean up and increase speed on your computer. There are even reasons for formatting an SSD, encrypting SSDs, and ways to increase storage space on a SSD. They all serve a purpose — there just isn’t a reason to defrag an SSD.

PB442

AOMEI Parition Assitant Pro detects that the partition is on a SSD and also recommends against defragging a SSD!



Even so, on the assumption AOMEI conversion to GPT cant deal with an overly fragmented disk, SSD or not, I defragged the system partition on my SSD :-(, sufficiently to reduce AOMEI report of fragmentation from 49% to 25%.   



Then I attempted the conversion to GPT again.  Sure enough I still got error 215.  So I dont think fragmentation is the problem despite the error description leading with that.



And as to free space, there is plenty in each partition and even more unalloacted on the disk


So it seems to me that whatever the problem is, it is not what is reported in the error 215 Information dialog.

PB442

So, digging into the logs, the  only line I can find that appears to show a problem is:

[21      ][2023-01-13 01:32:18] disk.cpp(257): Failed to IOCTL_DISK_GET_DRIVE_GEOMETRY. Disk Index: 1

Anyone know what that means, and what needs to be done to fix the problem?