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Some time ago, installed a bigger SSD (1 TB M.2) to act as my OS boot disk, cloning the original OS-sporting HD (256 GB) onto it and it works fine. Recently, I wanted to try out Linux and installed Mint on the old HD, which also works fine, giving me a dual boot option at startup. However, it seems like this left a Windows Boot Manager on the old disk (disk 0 in Windows Disk Mgt), so when I choose that option at dual boot, it goes through that one first and then boots the Windows OS from the new SSD (disk 2 in Disk Mgt). No biggie and quite understandable, since I chose to install Mint on disk 0, but still a bit peculiar.

Now Linux is giving me troubles, so I wanted to wipe the entire drive and install it anew. I already changed the boot order in BIOS/UEFI to boot directly into Windows rather than the Linux Mint boot menu no problems there either. In Windows Disk Management I could wipe the Linux partition on disk 0, after changing it into a dynamic volume, but the remaining 512 MB of "EFI System Partition" is untouchable. Even DISKPART is being sassy and also doesn't allow me to delete it.

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Now, first of all, I want to be sure that I'm not rendering my computer unbootable, in any there is still some dependency on disk 0 for a proper Windows boot from disk 2. Second of all, how do I go about killing the last remaining leftovers of the Resistance to completely dominate this particular old drive to be allocated and used at my whim? And without having to resort to third party software?

Here's a screencap of my Win Disk Mgt and boot info:

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You can remove the EFI partition using delete partition override. You probably don't want to do that – if the system is currently running in EFI mode, this will make Windows unbootable.

(EFI mode is very likely, because your Disk Manager is not showing any partition marked 'Healthy (System)' which would otherwise hold the BIOS-mode bootloader for Windows.)

You should first create a replacement EFI System Partition on some other disk. This can in theory be done from the running Windows system but I've had better luck using a Windows installation USB stick (Shift+F10 console). The full instructions can be extracted from here (partitioning) and here (configuring in step 2.2), but the summary is:

  1. Select a disk in DISKPART. Shrink partitions if necessary to make space (100 MB minimum). The EFI partition does not need to be first.
  2. Create a partition with the correct type: create part efi size=100
  3. Format as FAT32: format quick fs=fat32 label=System
  4. Assign drive letter (temporarily): assign letter=S
  5. Exit DISKPART and install bootloader: bcdboot C:\Windows /s S:
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  • Excellent answer! I did basically as you said and there's now a Healthy EFI System Partition on Disk 2 (size 512MB) after my C: partition. I did do it from my running Windows system and not from a USB installation, however. Nevertheless, does this mean I can safely wipe disk 0? Apr 14, 2020 at 8:55
  • Sure, but I'd recommend first trying to boot the system with the old 256 GB disk disconnected, to make sure it'll actually boot. Apr 14, 2020 at 9:20
  • Good point! Will do! Apr 14, 2020 at 9:26
  • Worked like a charm! Apr 14, 2020 at 11:55

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