Can I use BIOS_RVY partition as System?

It does indeed seem to indicate that, yet the one time I hid the original OS partition and attempted to boot into the cloned one, booting never completed. So I can only presume there was something necessary on the original Win 7 OS partition, that was no longer accessible due to being hidden.

If you cloned the original partition, then whatever was on the first one is on the second one as well. But it's possible that there were hard-coded references to the first partition, for example, the entries in the BCD (that you see in EasyBCD) are not stored as drive letters but actually references to partition offsets, i.e. the partition starting at byte nnnnnn on disk number xxxx. Cloning a partition would still leave the boot references to the initial partition, so you'd have to make sure that nowhere in the configuration (except for the individual entry for booting into the first partition) are there any references to the first partition (including the `{boot}` configuration).

No doubt this was due to EasyBCD being on the original OS partition ... and perhaps being the missing necessity I mentioned.

Nope, EasyBCD itself is not required. It configures the bootloader components of EasyBCD to be independent of EasyBCD the application. In fact, you can set up your system however way you like it with EasyBCD then fully uninstall EasyBCD and the system will continue to boot, i.e. there is no boot-time dependency on EasyBCD itself.
 
EasyBCD takes no part in the boot process. It adds, deletes ar alters entries in the BCD, and those changes will affect every subsequent boot, but it's MS bootmgr which is doing the booting every time.
What does "view settings" say is the boot device/path ?
 
Once again, thank you both.

@mqudsi - That makes things a bit clearer, but not sure I know how to capitalize on it, though it seems to feel tantalizingly close.

@Terry60 - Taken straight from "view settings".

There are a total of 3 entries listed in the bootloader.

Default: Windows 7 (main)
Timeout: 15 seconds
Boot Drive: C:\

Entry #1
Name: Windows 7 (main)
BCD ID: {current}
Drive: C:\
Bootloader Path: \Windows\system32\winload.exe

Entry #2
Name: NeoGrub Bootloader
BCD ID: {ef6a8ce1-7bd8-11de-b7a8-002185e56844}
Drive: C:\
Bootloader Path: \NST\NeoGrub.mbr

Entry #3
Name: Microsoft Windows 2
BCD ID: {ef6a8ce0-7bd8-11de-b7a8-002185e56844}
Device: \Device\HarddiskVolume3
Bootloader Path: \Windows\system32\winload.exe
 
Sorry, stepping into this late-on, I saw the early EFI reference and have been assuming this to be a UEFI PC hence a lot of my previous comments which are irrelevant now that I can see that this is a legacy BIOS/MBR PC..
Looking back I see also that C is clearly marked as "system"

(Disk Management flags have the following meanings
"boot" = "this is the system you're running"
"system" = "this is where I found the boot files for the currently running system"
"active" (on the first HDD in the BIOS boot sequence) = "this is where I started the search for the boot files"
"active" (on subsequent HDDs in the BIOS boot sequence) ="this is where I will look if I don't find something in the MBR on the first HDD")

All you need to do is leave both drives mounted and visible, boot into C and use EasyBCD to add an entry for the clone by whatever letter C sees it (F I think you said)
When you boot into the clone, It will be C.
When it's booted, it will see the original as something other than C.
Remember that not only don't the letters really exist on the drives, they also do not exist in the BCD as mqudsi already mentioned somewhere above.
When you create the entry in the BCD for drive F, that's just a way of telling EasyBCD in user understandable language where to go. EasyBCD will use the same registry map as Explorer and locate the drive you mean, but it will create a hashed UID describing the drive and partition offset in the BCD entry it creates.
I'd suggest you give the BCD entries unique names to avoid future confusion "Windows 7 clone" or somesuch for the copy, because they'll look identical in use.

If you want the appearance of invisibility (if that's not a non sequitur), remove the letter for the "other" system in Disk Management when each one is booted for the first time.
 
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When you boot into the clone, It will be C.
When it's booted, it will see the original as something other than C.

That was not my experience, and I did have them named differently at that point.
The PC was also acting sluggish and mostly unresponsive, and I am still not sure whether something got corrupted or not.

A thought has resurfaced that I neglected to mention.
This laptop is a Netbook running Windows 7 Starter Edition. Would that maybe impact anything?
 
If you booted it and it was not C, then it was not a clone.
Check the documentation of the partition management software you used to create the copy.
There are normally many commands for making copies of a partition and some of them will modify the copy so that it is no longer a clone.
It sounds like that's what you did.
Once an OS is created such that it thinks it's not C, then you have a big job altering that status (though that's what your copy command probably went and did in changing it from C)
If you want a genuine clone (identical to the original), then Backup/Restore (to a different location) will probably do it, but read the small print of the documentation and you might find another command that will do it in one step.
 
I have an old Windows 7 PC that I would like to dual boot. I have a pressing need.
It has the BIOS_RVY (recovery) partition as the first partition on the drive (Primary).
I have cloned the Win 7 (OS_Install) partition onto a 3rd Primary partition, and also have two Logical partitions following that.

Clearly both OS partitions need to be 'C' drive when in use (separately of course, with the alternate one being hidden).
I have installed NeoGrub and created two Windows items in the configuration file, that hide or unhide the two partitions accordingly, but due to System being on the original Win 7 drive (partition) , I cannot use System on that while hidden, to allow booting into the cloned Win 7 drive.

So can I use the BIOS_RVY partition as System?
And if so, do I just use bcdboot.exe or some GUI element of EasyBCD 2.3 to do so?

P.S. The BIOS_RVY partition is about 9 Gb in size and half used.
Hello There! It looks like you want to use the partiton BIOS_RVY. Well, you can't as there is a reason why MSI has put the partition there. BIOS_RVY is the recovery drive. If you delete it, then would not be able to recover your PC normally. You either have to use DVD or USB when you have trouble with your PC such as if a virus isn't letting you boot into Windows, you will use the F3 key which is recovery and recovery uses BIOS_RVY.

For good purposes, don't try to delete it. You might need it and you will regret it.
 
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