Delete EFI partition on external drive.

Question

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 ?

Answer 1

So, we want to remove the EFI partition on Disk 2.

Please run the following exactly from admin Command Prompt:

diskpart
select disk 2
list part
select partition 1
del par override
exit

Post screenshot.

Answer 2

Hi majestic100,

I'm Ramesh, here to help you.

1. Do you want to delete the EFI partition on the external drive?
2. Which drive are you booting the system from?

Answer 3

From admin Command Prompt, please run:

diskpart
list disk
select disk 1
list part
list vol

Post screenshot.

Answer 4

Hi Remesh,

Thanks for your reply. In answer to your questions:-

1. Yes I do. Currently can't access and therefore not available for use.
2. Probably both!. I've two SSD's. the first is labelled 'Windows 11 Home" and is the C:/ drive. The second is labelled 'Windows 11 Image" and is the D:/ drive. With both connected, the system boots no problem. If I disconnect the image drive (D:/) then the system won't boot. Ties up with response from Macrium.

Answer 5

Hi Remesh,

As requested;:-