[Bigtuna00]

From a search I could not confirm wether or not DBP can do this on a system using *EFI*. Before I purchase anything, I would like to know if this is possible.

The request is quite simple, best illustrated with a screen shot I think:



Is it possible using DBP (or otherwise)?

Thanks!

[yeshuas]

what OSes do you have installed, where do you have them installed, and in what order did you install them? e.g what OS is on the drive you want to remove and in what order was it installed, 1st, 2nd etc

[Bigtuna00]

Thanks for the reply. Both OS's are Windows 7 x64 Home Premium. I was doing some SSD vs HDD benchmarking for work. I'm presuming I installed first to the drive labled "Disk 1" in the screenshot because that's where the EFI System partition is. I actually don't remember, unfortunately.

My assumption is I need to do the following:

• Move/resize the C: partition.
• Copy the EFI System partition to Disk 0.
• "Fix" the bootloader, if it's possible.
• Remove Disk 1.

I tried to use EaseUS Todo Backup because I did something similar on a work machine but it doesn't recognize any of the partitions on these hard drives (it recognizes my data drive and DVD drive; I'm presuming it's because those are MBR and the two drives with OS's on them are GPT).

Appreciate any help you can offer (mainly if you can confirm whether or not DBP can do this, I'm happy to pay for it and figure it out from there).

FWIW, if there's another way to do this that preserves the OS install on Disk 0 I'm ok with it. I.e. can I "clone" the OS, make the partition smaller, add a new boot partition, restore the OS, etc.? I don't need to keep the existing boot partition if I don't have to, I'm just trying to avoid a full OS re-install.

[yeshuas]

I am pretty sure that DBP can do what you want.

what you would do is go to the Bootloader tab in DBP once it is installed that is, and then place a check in the Windows Vista or Windows 7 sytem bootloader and another check in the Specific Drive, choose the drive you want to install Bootloader to making sure it is the Vertex drive and then click on the Install Bootloader Button.

I would then unplug the Raptor drive and reboot to make sure it will of course boot to the Vertex drive without the Raptor drive.

This is merely conjecture, but the way you installed the OSes and I am assuming that one of the drives is SATA and one is SSD, probably didn't give you a pure and honest benchmark since the System files were on the Raptor drive for both OSes. What I would have done and then you would not be faced with the dilemma you now have (which of course can be rectified) is unplugged the separate drives during each subsequent install, you would not have had a dual boot system but it would have been simply unplug the drive you no longer wanted or reformat etc plus using the bios to switch between the drives you would have gotten the desired benchmark test, because each drive would have had the system files of its own on it. Oh well (-:

[Bigtuna00]

Many thanks for the follow-up. What you say sounds compelling. It'd be cool if it worked I think my main concern is as in the subject: does DBP support EFI? It seems no one else does (Easus Todo Backup appears not to, the author of *stolen software reference* said, basically, until someone gives him an EFI setup he won't work on it). This is what I get for trying something new I guess

Regarding the HDD vs SSD testing I'm a little unclear what you're referring to. These are two distinct installations of Windows 7. Only the bootloader is on the D drive, the page file, Windows folder, etc is unique per-drive. Using the terms described here:

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/wind ... partitions

The HDD drive has the System Partition, but each drive also has it's own Boot Partition. Are you saying there's something else in the System partition besides the bootloader?

Thanks again!

P.S. do DBP staff post here? It'd be super awesome if I could get 100% confirmation on this.

[yeshuas]

The System partition, has the folder "Boot" and all its contents and the "bootmgr" on it, you may be correct that once the system boots to whichever OS in a multiboot scenario, that is all the accessing it does of the System partition, that is why I said conjecture on my part (-:

I use EFI bios on the my system Asus P5Q Deluxe and DBP works for me without a hitch.

Like you suggested hopefully one of the programmers will look at this particular forum and confirm.

[jbullard]

Bigtuna

After reading some of this, my initial thoughts would be to power down, remove Disk 1, ensure EFI is turned off in the BIOS, insert the Windows 7 disk and do a startup repair. That is probably going to be the fastest easiest way.

The EFI partition is not structurally the same as your typical boot folder. Assigning a drive letter to it so you can copy contents will result in permission errors. I do have programs that can copy the contents. Unfortunately, the way the new bootloader works is very different and DBP would only be able to handle a portion of this. The rest would be command line arguments using diskpart.

But, I would attempt to do my first suggestion and if that doesn't work throw the Disk 1 back in, turn on EFI so you can boot. Then we can go from there.

[Bigtuna00]

Thanks for the reply. I'm sorry, I should have mentioned I already tried exactly this. In fact Windows Setup claimed it fixed the problem but the reboot took me straight into the mobo's UEFI GUI. I'm not really sure what Windows Setup thought it did; it didn't create a non-EFI bootloader (i.e. it didn't create the "boot" folder on the drive 0) and of course it didn't create a new System partition either.

One thing that was strange is the OS installations weren't listed in the initial repair dialog; it's possible I need to load a controller driver...but why would system repair say it worked? Maybe just a bug.

Thanks for the excellent suggestion, it was indeed the first thing I tried. I'll take a stab at it again and try to use a controller driver to see if it makes a difference.

[jbullard]

Can you post a screenshot of the contents of C? Make sure you show hidden os files so we can see if there is a boot folder there. If so, we may be able to generate a generic BCD mapped to Physical Device 0 (C) which could fix the problem.

[Bigtuna00]

Here you go:



(no boot files unfortunately the BCD stuff was just me making a backup of the database in case I hosed it)