[hokiealumnus]

Not a question really, just interesting behavior that I've never seen before. I got a new HDD and put it in the system. I'm going to use Acronis to transfer the entire system HDD (and programs, etc) over to the new disc and it will become my primary.

In doing so, I placed the new drive in such that it appears before all of the other drives, so when I clear CMOS it will boot to Win7 (instead of XP) by default.

So I boot as normal and get into Windows. It says it was installing driver software (never done that for a HDD before) and forced a restart. Get back into Windows to format the new HDD... lo' and behold, the EFI System Partition is now located on the new HDD.

Not a darn thing I can do about it. Running WD Diagnostics full test right now, as I was going to do anyway. But what if it had a bad sector? Win7 would have just screwed itself.

Anyway, not a big deal, especially since it's going to become my primary boot HDD anyway....just thought I'd share the experience. That little partition is the only thing I can think of that really annoys me about Win7. I understand why it wants to do that, but I dont' have to like it.

[hokiealumnus]

Well crap. Now this has become a question. As mentioned, the new HDD is supposed to become my OS drive. I'm going to use DriveImageXML to copy the current drive over to the new one.

In order to do so, the partition you want to copy to has to be marked as active. I cannot do that to the new drive. The option is grayed out. In BIOS, the HDDs are in simple IDE mode, for what it's worth. In disk management, the new drive shows up as Disk #0.

I've got five drives connected total, HP DVD/RW and four W/D HDDs, one each of 200G, 500G, 160G & 250G. I'm attempting to copy the 200G to the 250G.

Will happily obtain and supply any other info if it would be helpful. Anybody have a clue why I can't set the 250G as active? Remember, it has that stupid little 200M partition on it.

[I.M.O.G.]

You can only have 4 primary partitions, before you have to start using logical partitions. I think.

How many primary partitions do you have?

[hokiealumnus]

Curses...Five. The 160 is split in two. The remainder are entire drives, but that does total five partitions. But...it does show as a primary partition. It just can't be an active partition. Guess being the fifth partition installed is why?

[I.M.O.G.]

I'm not sure, I'd look into it further to confirm. My windows-foo is weak.

[hokiealumnus]

I think the active part is a wild goose chase. Just checked the screen for disks to copy to again. The little 200M partition is on there...but not the rest of the drive. For some reason, that little thing is preventing the HDD from being seen. FWIW, here is a shot of that screen as well as a shot of the disk management window.

I'm leaning toward getting rid of that EFI thing is my only option. But how? Time to ask Mr. Google! If anyone knows off the top of their head how to either get rid of it or move it to another drive, I'd be grateful.

[chawks2]

hokie, I had similar issues with the 200m partition + cloning. Read the thread I put together here. LMK if u have more questions.

[hokiealumnus]

Superb post and link, thank you very much! Sorry, my search prowess must have been failing last night.

.I think I only even need to run from within W7 since it is the only OS booting (I boot XP, but use BIOS to switch between the two, so the W7 bootloader does nothing but point to W7). Per the guide link, these four commands from an administrator-run prompt should work:

bcdedit /set {current} osdevice boot
bcdedit /set {current} device boot
bcdedit /set {bootmgr} device boot
bcdedit /set {memdiag} device boot

Does that sound right to you? Will the 200M partition then just become free space that I can absorb into the drive?

[chawks2]

bcdedit /store c:\boot\bcd /set {default} osdevice partition=c:
bcdedit /store c:\boot\bcd /set {default} device partition=c:
bcdedit /store c:\boot\bcd /set {bootmgr} device partition=c:
bcdedit /store c:\boot\bcd /set {memdiag} device partition=c:

The key to the problem is two fold. First, copy the path to your boot directory to the destination partition. In ur case, prolly c: to the other drive letter with the efi partition. Once u have copied this information to the new partition, u will then need to boot into a PE/XP/OS capable of running bcd commands = Vista or W7.

Finally, use the commands above, obviously make sure u change the drive letter above in the quote section to the new drive letter. VIOLA, u can safely remove the 200m partition. Reclaiming the space becomes more complicated because it is not "continguos". In the past, I just used Acronis to take an image and reapplied it to the drive.

Make sure you back up everything! Especially, if there is critical data on the drive, ideally you should clone this drive with another to do some experimenting. Everything I write about in this thread is from memory, make sure you read my posts to ensure customer satisfaction. Good luck!

[hokiealumnus]

Sorry, I'm just a little slow this morning. These commands:

1. %source%\c$\boot\xcopy *.* /s %fubar%\c$\boot
2. %source%\c$\attrib -r -h -s %source%\c$\bootmgr
3. copy %source%\c$\bootmgr %fubar%\c$

need to copy the boot information on the operative OS drive (C:\) to the empty partition attached to the EFI 200M partiiton (E:\)? %source% and %fubar% would both be nill and unused because I'm copying on the same machine. So the commands would be:

1. \c$\boot\xcopy *.* /s \e$\boot
2. \c$\attrib -r -h -s \e$\bootmgr
3. copy \c$\bootmgr \e$

...right?

And all of this can be run from within the operable copy of Win7 using a command prompt run as administrator or do I need to research how to make a WinPE boot CD to do this? I have the functioning copy of XP on another HDD but AFAIK you can't use bcdedit from an XP command prompt.

[chawks2]

Yep, u got it right. One of the tricky parts of getting this to work, is you NEED to know the drive letter assignment BEFORE hand. Especially in your case with multiple drives.

Im unsure if you can just do this within W7 as I never tried it. It should be possible. If you follow the instructions in the thread you should be all set.

[I.M.O.G.]

Nice stuff chawks, good read.

[hokiealumnus]

Yes, thank you very much chawks. I'll report back as soon as I have time to try it.

[chawks2]

No problemo. This has prevented me from rebuilding countless machines, only because of images I created BEFORE I found out about this "issue".

[Edward78]

Never heard of EFI until this thread.

[hokiealumnus]

By the bye, haven't had time to try it properly yet. I can confirm it doesn't work (at least the file move) from within Win7 because it's so well hidden. Will have to do it from another OS or WinPE boot disc.

[chawks2]

hokie, bummer about not being able to get to the hidden partition in W7, but I know you can certainly make the changes via an alternate OS etc.

After you make the changes to E: and boot into W7, you can then delete the 200MB partition. However, now your system drive will be E: and dont believe you'll be able to change to C:, I forget.

At this point, I would take an image of what you have. Delete the partition, reapply the image AND you may have to run the BCD edit commands one more time to ensure you have C: & not E:, pointing the bcd commands to C: now.

That is, if having a system drive of E: bothers you.

[hokiealumnus]

Ok...grr. I'm unable to use the copying commands. Period. They just won't do it. In Win7 OR XP. It says the file path is invalid. I guess I have to make a WinPE disk?

Heh, for the heck of it I did try cloning the Win7 disk from XP and booting to it. No-go.

So in your last suggestion, you think I should image the entire drive, unplug the old one, then apply that image to the new drive? Think that would work right and give me C:?

Sorry, these feel like dumb-arse questions as I type them. I can manipulate the heck out of an OS, but completely moving Win7 is throwing me for a loop. XP was fine and worked like a charm. Can't figure out why the heck this is giving me so much trouble. I know it's that accursed 200M partition though.

OH, btw, WinXP disk management won't allow me to delete the 200M partition (tried for the heck of it). Guess diskpart is the better option?

[hokiealumnus]

Ooo...I may not need this. At lunch, I downloaded & successfully installed Acronis W/D edition. Guess they updated it on their site. If it works to transfer to the new HDD, I'm done. Keep your fingers crossed!

[hokiealumnus]

HAH. Hah, Hah, Hah, Hah. Muhahahaha. The 200M partition is gone. I had Acronis (W/D edition...free if you use W/D hard drives) clone my OS drive to the drive that had the confounded EFI partition on it. In order to do so, Acronis must delete the partitions. Typing from my new HDD with completed clone right now and no 200M partition to speak of.

Chawks (and I.M.O.G), thank you very much for your help. Sorry to say I won't be going further to try and do it manually. I have a feeling a WinPE boot disc would have fixed the problem, but thanks to the lovely people at Acronis, now it doesn't have to. Case closed!