This is a brief summary. Any questions? You can use the 30 day trial of BootIt Collection. Make a BIU (BootIt UEFI) USB flash drive. Boot the flash drive and install BIU. Basically it's press Enter for each question. Your computer boots into Boot BIU. You will see an entry in the Boot Menu for your Windows. Boot into Windows and you will see nothing has changed. Restart into BIU. Click Maintenance. Use Partition Work to create Free Space for the impending copy. The space needs to be the same size, or larger, than the current Windows partition. The Free Space can be on Disk1 or Disk2 or Disk3. Your choice. In Partition Work. Select the Win 10/11 partition on Disk1. Click Copy. Select the Free Space on the target disk. Click Paste. Name the partition. eg Copy Win. Put a tick in Add to Boot Menu. This tick is essential. Click OK. The copy occurs. Then click close. Boot Edit. Select the new boot item, Edit, rename the Identity, OK, OK. Boot Edit, hide each Windows partition from the other. To Hide, select the "wrong" Windows partition in GPT Details and press the keyboard Space-bar. You only want to see one Windows partition when you boot. Restart your computer. Make sure each OS boots properly. They will. It is that simple. You can use the second Windows for experiments. Your first Windows won't be altered.
Since they both use the same boot partition, can not malware affect the boot partition from "the other" Os?
Brian put me onto BIU , works like a bomb! In fact, I have three Win 10s and a Win 11 on one laptop, with a separate data partition shared by all. Playpens for different s/w combos ; yes I know you can use VMs.
Sure. But unless you are using "adventurous" software with one OS, you are no more likely to acquire malware when multi-booting. Malware doesn't bother me anymore. An image restore will fix the problem.
EASTER, My apologies for omitting your favourite OS. Yes, the method works with Win8.1. I just copied my Win8.1 partition and it took 8 seconds in the test computer. It was a basic 8.1 install. No added software. You could have 5 to 10 Win8.1 in your computer if you desire. Just keep copying the original OS. I've never been able to install Win7 in a UEFI system.
That's great and my thanks for your reply. I'm likely one of only a handful of very active avid 8.1 systems users. I been procuring advanced new machines that have 10 and even 11 on them and intend to install 8.1 with the higher end hardware. It took years to super refine 8.1 to maximum reliability, performance and satisfaction and am perfectly happy to rid myself from buying into the Windows 10/11 hype simply because Microsoft turned their back on it and was pushy on forcing it (10) onto great user's who had settled into that O/S. This is a useful addition and my thanks again for bringing it to light.
Good question for me @Brian K- I might/could do just that if i can bring myself to stomach 11 enough to add it.
I'm confused. Your new computers come with Win11 already installed or do they come with a blank drive?
Both- I get a pick of some with 11 installed (OEM obviously) and others i can simply choose no HDD which i already have drives that are ready to work.
Not there yet @Brian K- I suppose that's an option? When i begin which is pretty soon i don't mind dual booting 11 & 8.1 on a system or two. Maybe i can be persuaded to spend some extra time with Windows 11 so i don't drop out the loop entirely but even 11 in all it's current supposed glory, 8.1 is the driving force for me on this end. WHY? Because it's the most personal customizable Windows O/S that doesn't raise a fuss when doing situational overhauls (with system files especially) to make Windows look more professional in the aesthetics arena. PLUS and it's a BIG PLUS, many XP useful automation programs run without incident where 11 is more concerned that something is being tampered with (which it is) but strictly for advanced automation & appearances and not to compromise it as malware might would do.
TeraByte Unlimited have some powerful utilities. I've probably only used a fraction of them. Maybe they truly are unlimited. By the way. Nice tutorial, Brian.
Thanks for this post, finally something pointing me in the right direction, but I do have a question. I’ve just done a clean install of Windows 10, installed BootIt (for EFI) and everything is working great. So I wanted to create a second bootable option with a copy of Windows 10 on the same HDD. Which has always been easy in BootIt (I’m a long time user). What I’m confused about here is that Windows 10 now creates multiple partitions. I take it all are needed to run one instance of Windows, so do I take it only the main Windows (larger) partition needs to be copied and that, that copy, would need to be able to work off the same related partitions ?
Toulousse, Copying the Windows partition with BIU is as easy if not easier than with BIBM. Yes, you only need to copy one partition. You can copy it five times or more if you desire. The booting files for each Windows (or Linux) installation will be created in the EFI system partition by BIU. You don't have to do this yourself. If you "Put a tick in Add to Boot Menu" then BIU will create the Boot Item for you. BIBM doesn't do that. With BIU you can copy the Windows partition to the same or to any of your other drives. With GPT disks in a UEFI system you can fresh install Windows to any of your drives without having to remove other drives. This can't be done in a MBR system. Drives need to be removed so you are installing to HD0. BootIt is my favourite software. BIBM and BIU.
Brilliant Brian!, worked exactly as you said it would! Thanks! Yes, I absolutely love BootIt, it's saved me many, many hours in the past restoring clunky Windows partitions!
Toulousse, If you installed Win11 first, before BIU, your ESP will be 100 MB. If you installed BIU first, your ESP will be 400 MB. A typical microsoft.xxx is around 25 MB so a 100 MB ESP will only support 3 Windows OS. So if you want to boot more Microsoft OS than 3 you will need to resize the 100 MB ESP larger. A typical ubuntu.xxx is less than 5 MB.
Brian - a general, maybe naive, imaging question here ... I have two Win 10's created this way via Bootit UEFI on one laptop, and four (one upgraded to Win 11) on another laptop. Data on a separate partition. (As per your mentoring some time ago. I love having the different Wins to test different configs. ). If I do a whole disk image and restore should all instances and data generally be restored correctly - in Macrium, TB IFW, Hasleo, etc.? Or would the different softwares handle it differently, and need testing?
Paul, I haven't tested with different imaging software but I'd expect entire drive backup/restores to work.
