Move Windows 10 Boot Files To Their Own Partiton

T

tryeager

Member
I have a triple boot machine for Windows 10, Windows 7 Home Premium, and Windows 7 Pro. Disk management tells me that my 100G Windows 10 partition is always the "active" "system" partition no matter what OS I load. As expected, my Drive C: is always the OS I choose to boot, and the partitions of the other OSs take on D: and E:.

At the beginning of my drive there is a 100M empty unlettered unnamed partition, which was once called "System" for one of the OSs, likely the original W7HP. I'd like my boot files to occupy this small partition. What is the best way to move there (or create there) my W10 boot files so they continue to work for all three OSs?

My reason for this is to reduce my backup size and time when I backup (separately) the two W7 OSs. A "system" backup via Ease ToDO (and, likely, any other software) saves the W7 partitions but adds the large W10 partition to the job since it is required to boot the W7s.
 
I determined how to do this myself, and I'll relate my experience of doing it twice.

The basic answer to how to move the W10 booting files is: just like you would W7, but be sure to use EasyBCD 2.3 beta. (I used build 202.) Under the backup section, there is a "change boot drive" option, which does the trick.

I had already read the EasyBCD was W10 compatible, but I had searched this forum rather than the documentation to learn how compatible it is. Forum post indicate a difference between W10 and earlier BCD files. The website documentation does not mention any caution or difference about using Easy BCD (at least 2.3) under W10 and other post-Vista Windows.

On one computer (a restored version but not a clone of my own computer) moving the boot files worked, but EasyBCD did not set the new destination as active. I used G-Parted to boot and set the active status, and then everything was OK.

After demonstrating that the W10 files can be moved, I performed the move on my own hard drive. This time, I checked before restarting, and the partition was indeed active. On restart, all 4 of my non system partitions ( 3 OSs and 1 data) required automatic chkdisk-ing. That took nearly 30 minutes and it found numerous reparse points that needed their extended attribute set deleted. After that, though, it worked.
 
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