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. Anonymous
    2024-07-17T15:55:53+00:00

    Hi Remesh,

    This was result ?

    D:\ !!!!!?????

    This is reality:-

    C:\ is MSI and F:\ is USB.. Where did D:\ come from ??? and only one installation found ??

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  2. Ramesh 181.2K Reputation points Volunteer Moderator
    2024-07-17T15:17:23+00:00

    //Boot Manager only showing one boot device.//

    With the external drive connected, please try bootrec /rebuildbcd from WinRE. It should add the external drive to the BCD/boot menu. Reboot the system to test if the boot options are working.

    Once done, clone the EFI (from MSI → Samsung) so that both disks have identical configurations.

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  3. Anonymous
    2024-07-17T15:06:37+00:00

    Hi Remesh,

    Subsequent to my ***EDIT *** yesterday, I can confirm-

    boot order#1 is "UEFI USB hard Drive".

    boot order#2 is "UEFI Hard Drive: Windows Boot Manager"

    For some reason, whilst I've taken a snip of BIOS to upload to you as confirmation, for some reason they will not upload (?)

    Connected external drive and rebooted successfully. Assume it has booted from USB hard drive but I can't confirm this. the only option I see is to remove the internal MSI and reboot. Do you have any thoughts. ???

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  4. Anonymous
    2024-07-16T11:56:48+00:00

    Hi Remesh,

    No it didn't ??

    *** EDIT-1 ***.

    I'll run Macrium again. I'll let you know what happens.

    *** EDIT- 2 ***

    1. External Samsung EVO SSD formatted.
    2. Start Macrium Free. Noted that only the Windows 11 partition formatted and not the entire disk (?). The 3 other partitions remain.
    3. Drag and drop all 4 partitions from disk 0 (MSI M390) to disc 1 (Samsung EVO). Disk 1 now show Windows 11 data partition (to be copied)
    4. Run System Configuration.

    1. Run Macrium
    2. Completed 100%. (Successful ??)
    3. System Configuration doesn't show second 'boot' device
    4. Boot successful with USB SSD connected (Samsung EVO). Boot Manager only showing one boot device.
    5. Remove USB SSD and reboot
    6. Boot successful. Hence using MSI M390 and it's windows partition

    So can only assume Macrium not doing its job of updating boot manager !! I think we've come to the end of the road. Don't know what else to do

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  5. Ramesh 181.2K Reputation points Volunteer Moderator
    2024-07-16T11:36:14+00:00

    Hi,

    When booting from the USB hard disk, did it show the boot menu with two OS entries? You added dual-boot entry using EasyBCD and then cloned the EFI to your USB disk. The dual-boot option should appear, right?

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