Moving EFI partition to another drive

NavyLCDR · 23 Oct 2021

Or just create a new EFI System Partition on disk 3 which requires no extra software to do.

Megahertz · 23 Oct 2021

NavyLCDR said:

Or just create a new EFI System Partition on disk 3 which requires no extra software to do.

Easy task for you and others.
If OP is here, he needs help.

Please give him the CMDs

NavyLCDR · 23 Oct 2021

Megahertz said:

Easy task for you and others.
If OP is here, he needs help.

Please give him the CMDs

Code:

diskpart
select volume c
shrink desired=100
create part EFI
format fs=fat32 quick
assign letter=t
exit
bcdboot C:\Windows /s T: /f UEFI
diskpart
select vol t
remove letter=t
exit
exit

DO NOT CONTINUE if any of the commands above produces an error!

SIW2 · 23 Oct 2021

heywoodg said:

Does it matter where the EFI partition is located. It usually appears to the left of the Windows partition.
If I shrink the Win 10 partition on Disk 3 to accomodate the EFI partition, it will end up on the right of the Win 10 partition.
Is this okay?

You can put it wherever you think it is not going to be in the way.

I dont need a separate esp with this mobo. It finds the efi folder on the root of any partition.

You could try it. Copy the efi folder from the 100mb partition on disk 4 onto your C partition.

Then unplug disk4 and see what happens.

This is very useful not only because it can boot windows from mbr disk in efi mode, more importantly can boot ntfs usb stick in efi mode. No need for the 4gb file restriction of fat32 usb stick.

But it seems to still need fat32 usb stick to save bios screenshots onto.

heywoodg · 24 Oct 2021

steve108, I've taken your advise and created an image with Macrium Reflect. I have noticed it has taken the EFI partition from Disk4 and the Win10 partition from Disk3 which is what I want.
Being a bit nervous about trying to create an EFI partition on the drive where my preferred Win10 is, is it possible to restore the the Macrium image which was created from two different drives to one single drive.

NavyLCDR · 24 Oct 2021

If you have an image to restore anyway, then why not take the two minutes to run the commands I gave you? If they don't work, then restore the image.

steve108 · 24 Oct 2021

heywoodg, @NavyLCDR knows this stuff much better than I do, so try their suggestion first.

I'm honestly not sure if your proposal would work without needing further commands to make it work, but since you have Macrium Reflect backup images, you can try.

heywoodg · 24 Oct 2021

NavyLCDR
entered the code you provided. I can see the new EFI partition on Disk3, 100MB Healthy (EFI) System Partition.
I get an error when doing the bcdbboot bit: "failure when attempting to copy boot files".
Made sure I used correct assigned letter, I can see it in file explorer.

Moving EFI partition to another drive-211024-163151.jpg

steve108 · 24 Oct 2021

heywoodg,
You can try booting from a Macrium Reflect Rescue USB, then try the option to fix boot problems. It may fix this issue easily and painlessly.

NavyLCDR · 24 Oct 2021

steve108 said:

heywoodg,
You can try booting from a Macrium Reflect Rescue USB, then try the option to fix boot problems. It may fix this issue easily and painlessly.

That's exactly what I was going to suggest.