Windows 10 - System boots fine, but I somehow have multiple EFI System Partitions on my boot drive (letter C:/ assigned)

W

WafflesASAP

Member
Apologies if this has been answered elsewhere, but I've spent hours Googling and searching through these forums and can't find anyone in a similar situation to learn from their experience.

I'm hoping EasyBCD can help me in this situation, but before I get into that, let me explain my current setup.

I'm running Windows 10 on a machine with 3 SSDs:

  • 1 SATA WD Blue (1TB) - this is primarily a backup drive
  • 1 NVMe Samsung 980 Pro (2TB) - where Windows 10 is installed
  • 1 NVMe Samsung 980 Pro (2TB) - where I install games and non-critical programs

Without going into too much detail about why I have multiple EFI System Partitions on my boot drive (and even one on the old WD Blue drive, where my Windows 10 install used to be before I transferred it to the first 980 Pro drive), let me explain my problem:

Somehow I have FOUR EFI System Partitions on my boot drive. The system boots fine, but I'd like to identify which of the 4 EFI System partitions is actually being used by my system so I can delete the others and extend my main C: drive partition to absorb that (eventually) unallocated space.

EasyBCD tells me that Windows' Boot Manager is being loaded from "partition=\Device\HarddiskVolume8," though when I run DISKPART in an elevated Command Prompt and list volumes on my boot drive, volume 8 does NOT have the label "SYSTEM" or "BOOT," and the "Info" column for that volume says "Hidden" (instead of "System" as I'd expect it to).

Here's a screenshot of EasyBCD:
https://imgur.com/a/i44GyoV

Here's a screenshot of the Disk Management GUI:
https://imgur.com/a/WIsG7oh

Here's a screenshot of the command prompt window showing volume 8 with no label and "Hidden" displayed under the "Info" column:
https://imgur.com/a/sF6OGRe

Can anyone help me figure out WHICH EFI system partition is ACTUALLY the active one so I can delete the others and extend my boot drive to absorb that unallocated space?

Regardless of whether or not you can help, THANK YOU for your time. I'm incredibly grateful to you!
 
I don't know where EasyBCD (or the BCD itself if that's where it comes from) comes up with the HarddiskVolume number.
It bears no relation to the Diskpart Volume which is a list of all drives and partitions in apparently random order even within a drive sometimes.
I guess it's sequenced according to a timestamp of order of creation or something similarly obscure.
My own case is very simple. One EFI system partition at the start of disk 0 which EasyBCD lists as HarddiskVolume1. No doubt about where it is and Diskpart calls it Volume 7.
I imagine you're actually booting from Disk 0 on the WD drive since that's where the boot process expects to find it.
Try
Diskpart select disk 0
Diskpart list part
and see if Partition 1 is Type "System"
 
Hey, thanks for the reply!

There is no Windows install on the WD drive anymore, so I don’t think I’m booting into Windows from that drive (if that’s what you’re saying). EasyBCD also seems to be saying that it sees that the BootLoader is on the C:/ drive (the first Samsung 980 Pro SSD). That said, I definitely can’t rule out the possibility that EasyBCD is just displaying the “most recently created” EFI partition and showing that as the “active” one, idk for sure. If my system is indeed using the BootLoader from the WD drive (which has drive letter D:/ assigned), that’d be wild, and I hadn’t even considered it as a possibility. Thank you for helping me see that I was making a potentially really bad assumption, haha.

I also didn’t realize that the volume/partition numbers displayed in the diskpart CLI tool wouldn’t necessarily match those in the Disk Management GUI (or EasyBCD GUI), and now that I know that I’m glad I didn’t just assume I could delete all EFI partitions except the one at “HardDiskVolume8.”

Either way, do you know of anyone in particular in this community whom could potentially help me determine which EFI partition is the active one so I can delete the others and reclaim that space?

Either way, THANK YOU for the reply, the knowledge share, and your time!
 
Look for the type system on each disk as I suggested at the end of my previous post.
 
Unless you have somewhere else specified in Tools > Options > "auto load..." EasyBCD defaults to looking on disk 0 partition 1.
If you didn't have to steer it elsewhere, thats the most likely place even if there's no longer an OS on the same drive.
 
Look for the type system on each disk as I suggested at the end of my previous post.
Click to expand...

I don't know how I missed the part of your original message where you asked me to check if Partition 1 of Disk 0 had "Type: System", but I completely missed it, and I apologize.

My initial response to your reply was probably offensive - like I was dismissing your expertise when I asked you to refer me to someone else. I definitely did not intend to do that at all, I just plainly missed crucial context in your original reply (leading to me misunderstanding the entire post) and kinda stuck my foot in my mouth because of it. It was a dumb mistake (and kinda ignorant of me, to be honest) so I thank you for not just writing me off after that.

With that said, here's the requested info:

I just ran Diskpart again to see if the first partition of Disk 0 also has "Type: System" (as Partition 1 of Disk 1 has) and - sure enough - it does:
https://imgur.com/a/0dl7UZp

Unless you have somewhere else specified in Tools > Options > "auto load..." EasyBCD defaults to looking on disk 0 partition 1.
If you didn't have to steer it elsewhere, thats the most likely place even if there's no longer an OS on the same drive.
Click to expand...

I double-checked to make sure I'm not overriding which BCD gets loaded on start and confirmed that I am not:
https://imgur.com/a/EqDWAUX

I guess my questions now are:
  1. Are you saying that because Partition 1 of Disk 0 has "Type: System," that that is most likely to be the "active" EFI partition? If the answer to this is "no," please skip my next question altogether.
  2. If so, could I theoretically delete that partition and - thanks to Partition 1 of Disk 1 also having "Type: System" - be confident that my system would now use one of the EFI system partitions on the C: drive (the first Samsung 980 Pro)?
  3. If we can't be sure that EasyBCD is actually correct when it says that the EFI partition in use is Volume 8 (which, according to Diskpart and the Disk Management GUI is partition 7 on my C: drive), is there even a way I can reliably find out which is the active partition without just deleting one and seeing if the system still boots?
 
Try reordering the HDD priority sequence in the BIOS to put the NVMe Windows drive before the WD.
If the system boots the BCD should look a bit different because it won't be the one you've been editing previously.
Bummer that Diskpart marks all those EFI Sytem partitions as system, doesn't help a lot.
Before UEFI, system was the Disk Management flag indicating where you'd booted from and there could only be one, then they went UEFI and decided that made the system flag redundant and omitted it, but in your case it doesn't help a lot with multiple EFI System partitions.
On my PC, with its sole EFI SP, the diskpart System partition type acts like the old Disk Management flag in confirming where the boot files are (if I didn't already know)
At least if you start deleting the apparently redundant last three, you'll have the comfort of knowing that flipping the WD drive back to the top of the BIOS queue will restore your ability to boot if anything untoward happens.
 
Hey, I just realized I never thanked you for your help with this advice. I'm now 3 months late in saying so, but better late than never, I guess:

THANK YOU for your time and advice. I went ahead and deleted the redundant last 3 EFI System partitions (on my C: drive) and the system still boots.

Now I "only" have the two EFI system partitions left - the one on my D: drive (my backup drive, which has no Windows install on it), and the one on my C: drive (where my Windows 10 Home install lives).

I'm gun shy about deleting the one on my D: drive, so I think I'll just leave it there, as it doesn't appear to actually be causing any problems. Now I just have to figure out how to get my C: drive to actually take advantage of the 801 or so MB of unallocated space (501 MB of which is located before the first partition on the drive, and 300 MB of which is after every other partition on the drive. That 300 MB section should be easy enough to extend into my C: drive, while the 501 MB coming before every other partition on the drive poses some difficulties, but that's neither here nor there).

Thank you so much, again, for your time, and I hope you're well my friend =)

-- Mitch
-- Philly, PA
 
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