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
    2024-06-23T02:34:00+00:00

    Yes, clone Disk 0's EFI and OS partitions to Disk 1 using Macrium Reflect.

    Detach Disk 0.

    If the EFI partition can't be cloned, we can rebuild the BCD in Disk 1 by booting into WinRE using the USB setup disk.

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  2. Anonymous
    2024-06-23T10:01:30+00:00

    It may boot up in D: but the image partition (Basic Data Partition) is way out of date (updates, saved files etc) than the in use partition (C:). Definitely need to boot from Disc 1 (MSI M390) as currently doing and copy in use partition of Disk 0 (C:) across thus releasing disk 0 (Samsung EVO)

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  3. Anonymous
    2024-06-23T10:09:57+00:00

    Not used Macrium to move independent partitions so will be interesting.

    Do I have to to copy the EFI partition of disc 0 (Samsung) across to disc 1 (MSI M390). ? System using the EFI partition of disc 1 to boot. Should I only try and copy the 'in use' partition of disc 0 to disc 1 ?

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  4. Ramesh Srinivasan 87,435 Reputation points Independent Advisor
    2024-06-23T10:21:28+00:00

    We've fixed disk 0's EFI. To test if it's working, boot from disk 0 by changing the boot order in UEFI.

    If Disk 0 boots fine, clone the entire disk 0 to disk 1. Then, detach disk 0.

    (Have a USB setup disk ready in case we need to run bcdboot later.)

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  5. Anonymous
    2024-06-23T15:02:22+00:00

    I'm becoming confused and appear to be going round in circles !!

    You say we've fixed Disc 0's (Samsung EVO) EFI. This is the C: drive. On start-up I'm assuming it is booting from disc 0 EFI. It boots fine.

    Earlier you indicated that whilst we're booting from disc 0, it was using disc 1 (MSI M390) data partition.

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

    Earlier you indicated that whilst we're booting from disc 0, it was using disc 1 (MSI M390) data partition **please confirm my understanding is correct**

    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**

    What I have done is connected the earlier recovered SSD as an external drive and attempted to clone disc 0 to this. It fails and I'm back where I started - see original posted message. The external SDD is not 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. Need to remove partitions on external SSD and reinitialise

    Also need to copy boot partition from disc 0 to disc 1 This would mean the onboard SSD (MSI M390) is the boot drive and had latest data. **please confirm my understanding is correct**. If this is correct I can physically remove the Samsung EVO

    Appreciate if you could provide command lines to achieve this if indeed this is possible. Also need to get external SSD operational again by deleting partitions and re-initialising. I'd appreciate if you could re-iterate command to do this

    Finally, I'd like to thank you for your time and effort you've afforded me and I apologise for being a pain!

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