change boot partition in Windows 8

Question

I have Windows 8 installed on C: drive.

But my Laptop boots from E: Drive. Here is the bcdedit output.

And Here is the disk management's screenshot.

Can anyone tell how to move boot files to C: drive.

I want to format drive E: but it doesn't.

Answer 1

bcdedit output shows that boot files are on Volume2 which is not mapped.

But disk management shows active partition mapped to drive e:.

Maybe How to move(copy) Windows 7 boot files to another drive/partition and make it bootable can help. The procedure is the same for Windows 7 and Windows 8.

In you case while booted in Windows 8:

1. In disk management mark partition mapped to drive c: as active (click on partition and then right click and select from pop-up menu)

2. Open administrative command prompt and type:

bcdboot c:\windows (and enter)

After reboot you should be able to delete e: (or format it) if it does not contain files you want to keep.

Answer 2

The link provided by snayob answer was the solution for me. As a link may go broken, here is the steps:

1. Download, unzip and run Dual-boot Repair tool (handles win XP to windows 10).
2. On target disk, if you do not have a boot partition, create one with disk management (launch-able from dual boot repair tool). 50mb should be enough, format it as NTFS, map it to a drive character (say H:). It must be a primary partition. It will be primary if you do not have to much partitions on your disk.
   (Mapping to a character is only temporarily needed, you can unmapped it at the end.)
3. Make sure your boot partition is set as active (in disk management, right click it and select Mark Partition as active).
4. In dual boot repair, use Repair MBR & Boot Record: select your boot drive (H: in our example in 2.), tick Force and Fix MBR, validate.
5. Then use Repair BCD: select your boot drive again, validate.
6. Optionally, de-map your boot drive in disk management.

You can test the result by rebooting without your old disk. If things goes wrong, put your old disk back in place and ensure it is the first one in boot order to recover your old boot.

The downloadable tool is on the same site, so if it goes missing, you may have to search and maybe find it somewhere else.

You may be able to do that without the downloadable utility, using bcdboot as proposed by snayob answer, but I have not tested it.
And you may have to explicitly tell it on which drives to act:

bcdboot C:\Windows /s H: