After successfully cloning my now-dead HDD to a new SSD with AOMEI Pro, I have noticed that the new drive has two EFI partitions. The SSD boots normally. Is there anything I should do about the second EFI partition, or should I leave well enough alone? (Only Windows has been installed on this laptop. Xubuntu was run once as a live USB session but was never installed.) Thanks.
SouthPark, From Microsoft..... You can get bizarre issues (extra partitions and booting files in incorrect partitions) if you try to install a second OS on a disk with two ESPs.
Huh, I just look at my Disk Management, I've got two EFIs too. Is there a safe way to get rid of one of them, and which one would you know to get rid of? Thanks, Acadia
Try this. Open an Admin Command Prompt... diskpart list vol You should see two EFI SYSTEM partitions. Does one or both say "System" in the Info column? Here is mine....
OK. The 99 MB one is the ESP in use. Create a backup image of both ESP, just in case. Delete the 100 MB ESP. Leave the Unallocated Free Space just created alone. There is no disadvantage in having areas of Free Space. It's not worth the time in sliding partitions to get rid of 100 MB of Free Space.
All OK with you guys now? It sounds like AOMEI should be in the naughty chair. To find Disk Partition numbers (not the same as Volume numbers) which correlate with Disk Management numbers... Admin Command prompt diskpart select disk 0 list par SouthPark, it looks like your missing Partition 2 in Disk Management will be "Reserved" in Diskpart. The MSR doesn't appear in Disk Management. Partition numbers don't necessarily correlate with the physical partition order on the disk.
I don't understand how the 99MB partition can be the boot partition, because I thought the boot partition had to be the first one. Strangely, when I cloned the HDD, the small blank-appearing Partition 2 was seemingly missing from the SSD, so it's interesting to see it listed here.
Your 99 MB partition shows as System in Diskpart. Maybe the 100 MB partition was the original ESP but not anymore. The ESP can be anywhere on the disk. First, second or even last. On my test computer I just created 3 ESPs. In Diskpart... vol shows 2 ESPs are Hidden par shows 3 ESPs are System This is the "same" as your screenshots.
I used MiniTool Partition Wizard 12.1 to copy the EFI partitions, then deleted the 100 MB one. The computer would not reboot, so I inserted a previously made Macrium repair drive and ran a boot repair. After that, it rebooted successfully. These are the partitions I now see. Is this good to go? Thanks.
