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 181.2K Reputation points Volunteer Moderator
    2024-07-20T13:22:25+00:00

    The BCDBoot command adds D:\Windows to the BCD. If that doesn't work, try connecting the M.2 disk to the motherboard again. Loading it as an external/USB drive is clearly not working.

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  2. Anonymous
    2024-07-20T13:00:33+00:00

    Noted. f I hadn't restored bcd.old, which disc ? mine displays C:\ and F:\ not Y:\

    So there's no confusion on my part ,having restored bcd.old and hence now able to boot my PC, do I perform just your previous instructions i.e. :-

    Make a copy of BCD;

    • bcdedit /export c:\bcd.bak2

    Add the dual boot entry.

    • bcdboot D:\Windows

    or is there any other commands I should perform as well ?

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  3. Ramesh 181.2K Reputation points Volunteer Moderator
    2024-07-20T12:42:26+00:00

    I meant Y:\Efi\Microsoft\Boot.

    If you have undone the steps, BCD.old won't be available in the above folder.

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  4. Anonymous
    2024-07-20T12:35:27+00:00

    As indicated in previous post, I restored old bcd:-

           cd /d y:\EFI\Microsoft\boot

       del bcd /a

   ren BCD.old BCD

    PC now boots - I'm using for this response

    You say 'BCD.old is saved in the "Efi\Microsoft\Boot" folder and the C drive's root.

    I cannot find this folder to confirm. What am I not doing ???

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  5. Ramesh 181.2K Reputation points Volunteer Moderator
    2024-07-20T11:32:25+00:00

    The old BCD is there (saved as BCD.old in the "Efi\Microsoft\Boot" folder and the C drive's root).

    I assume you restored it and be able to boot now.

    This command adds the dual boot entry to BCD:

    From WinRE.

    Make a copy of BCD;

    • bcdedit /export c:\bcd.bak2

    Add the dual boot entry.

    • bcdboot D:\Windows

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