Delete EFI partition on external drive.

Anonymous
2024-06-18T13:31:49+00:00

I've been having problems regarding SSD cloning. Macrium have been very helpful. It appears that I'm booting from the 2 installed internal hard drives (!?!).

It was working OK for ages but obviously something subsequently has happened.

It was recommended I clone to an external drive.

Fortunately I had a another SDD that I could use. I reformatted this and connected externally . Checked with file folder that it could be read and was empty. All good.

Used Macrium to clone but was concerned that if supposedly booting form 2 internal drives, what am I copying, and would it work?

It didn't!

Both drives had 3 partitions; An EFI System partition (100MB), Windows 11 Home partition (465 GB) and a Recovery Partition ((610MB)

To cut long story short, the external drive now consists of 2 partitions, The EFI partition and an unallocated partition.

The external SDD is no accessible !!. I get the message "You currently don't have permission to access this folder" and continuing, "You have been denied access to this folder" " to gain access to this folder you will have to use the security tab"

Don't understand what to do next.

Using Disk Management and right clicking on greyed out EFI partition gives a greyed out window

Can anyone help in getting this 'external' drive accessible again ?

Windows for home | Windows 11 | Recovery and backup

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  1. Ramesh Srinivasan 87,435 Reputation points Independent Advisor
    2024-06-24T15:16:23+00:00

    //So disk 1 not booting correctly but then neither is disc 0 since its using EFI from disk 1 and data partition from disc 0. (what went wrong for this to happen a mystery)/

    Still we don't know which disk you're booting from. Check your UEFI settings. Or disconnect disk 1 and boot from disk 0.

    If disk 0 boots fine, clone disk 0 to disk 1 and detach disk 0.

    //My view is we need to copy data partition of disc 0 to data partition of disk 1, thus allowing disc 0, the Samsung EVO, to be removed. Agree ??//

    Yes. But, as I said we need to determine if disk 0 can boot correctly without the presence of disk 1.

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  2. Anonymous
    2024-06-24T15:09:33+00:00

    PC Start-u screen options:-

    With windows 11 selected (by default) system boots no problem. Under our understanding from previous posts this option is using disc 1 (MSI D:) EFI partition and disc 0 (Samsung C:) data partition

    If I select "Windows 11 Image" then I get:-

    Here I'm assuming it's using Disc 1 EFI to boot and wanting to use disk 1 data partition. This used to be a clone partition - a Windows 11 Image - but has since been deleted/formatted, so no Windows data to start up. Let me know it assumption is incorrect.

    So disk 1 not booting correctly but then neither is disc 0 since its using EFI from disk 1 and data partition from disc 0. (what went wrong for this to happen a mystery)

    My expectation is 1) Windows 11, disc 0 (Samsung EVO) EFI and disc 0 data (would be if only one disk)

                              2) Windows 11 Image disk 1 (MI M390) EFI and disk 1 data

    My view is we need to copy data partition of disc 0 to data partition of disk 1, thus allowing disc 0, the Samsung EVO, to be removed. Agree ??

    Hopefully I haven't made mistakes in understanding (or typing)

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  3. Ramesh Srinivasan 87,435 Reputation points Independent Advisor
    2024-06-24T02:49:42+00:00

    //So booting from D;\ EFI partition but using C:\ data partition. D:\ is the onboard MSI M390 which is what I want to boot from but need C:\ data partition copied to D:. If this successful can remove disk 0 (C:) which is Samsung EVO//

    That's correct. However, change the boot order to Disk 0 to verify if it boots correctly.

    If it does, clone Disk 0 to Disk 1 and then detach Disk 0.

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  4. Anonymous
    2024-06-23T18:33:18+00:00

    Viewed Boot Manager:-

    1. BIOS mode is UEFI
    2. Boot Option #1 is MSI M390 500GB. This is Disc 1's EFI

    The following is properties of D:\ drive (Disc 1)

    It was a clone of C: but now contains nothing.

    So booting from D;\ EFI partition but using C:\ data partition. D:\ is the onboard MSI M390 which is what I want to boot from but need C:\ data partition copied to D:. If this successful can remove disk 0 (C:) which is Samsung EVO

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  5. Ramesh Srinivasan 87,435 Reputation points Independent Advisor
    2024-06-23T15:16:30+00:00

    /On start-up I'm assuming it is booting from disc 0 EFI. It boots fine. **please confirm my understanding is correct**//

    I don't know which hard drive you're booting from. Check your UEFI settings. But Diskpart says the system is booting from Disk 1's EFI.

    // If I clone disk 0 to disc 1, I will "overwrite" the used data partition of this disc with data, which is month older and out of date from disc 0 **please confirm my understanding is correct** //

    Is D your data partition? What does it contain? I thought it was the clone of C:

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