Restoring BIOS-type Windows partition image to UEFI only drive?

Zarathustra[H]

Extremely [H]
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Hey all,

Got a tough but to crack here, would appreciate some suggestions, as I haven't played much (at all?) With UEFI to date. I've been happily running I'm BIOS mode and putting off learning anything new.

So heres the deal.

I now have a UEFI only disk installed in my rig.

My old win10 partitions exists only as a backed up disk image.

Is there a good way I can restore my old BIOS mode disk image onto my UEFI only disk and have it boot?

My first try was to do a fresh win10 install so it created all the efi and boot partitions, and then to remove the new main partition and replace it with the old restored image.

That didn't work at all, even after attempting boot repair using the install disk.

Does anyone have any other suggestions?

Hindsight being 20-20 I should have converted the existing disk to UEFI before yanking it out and making my system UEFI only, but I didn't know that at the time.

Any suggestions would be appreciated!

Thanks,
Matt
 
I've never heard of an "UEFI only" disk. Do you mean a GPT disk?

When you say restore your HDD in "bios mode" that makes me think you are trying to restore a MBR disk to a GPT disk.

If that is the case the GPT disk will need to be zeroed to wipe the partition scheme but I would think that should be handled with the backup software during the restore.

What did you take the disk image with?
 
I've never heard of an "UEFI only" disk. Do you mean a GPT disk?

When you say restore your HDD in "bios mode" that makes me think you are trying to restore a MBR disk to a GPT disk.[/url]

No, this is not a MBR vs GPT issue. It has nothing to do with the partition table. (at least not directly)

Intel PCIe SSD 750, like most PCIe SSD's, will only boot in UEFI mode. The traditional BIOS boot options are not available, so I needed to find a way to create the EFI partition in order to make my old images bootable.

If that is the case the GPT disk will need to be zeroed to wipe the partition scheme but I would think that should be handled with the backup software during the restore.

What did you take the disk image with?

Yeah, so the problem is not writing the disk image at all. (I did this using a frontend for dd in linux)

I can write the partition just fine, it is mountable from the new disk, it's just a matter of getting it bootable that is a problem.

So what I tried doing was doing a fresh install of Windows 10 from the ISO, having the installer create all the relevant EFI and boot partitions, then just remove the main OS partition and replace it with my old one.

I was hoping the EFI booting would just be statically linking to a partition by partition number during the booting process, and this would work, but it didn't.

It must be doing something else, like identifying partitions by GPTID, or something like that.

So, I figure I have to find a way to edit the EFI partition so it points to the correct OS partition, but never having worked with UEFI before, I can't figure out how to do this, and I have found surprisingly little while googling to do so.

I did find this, which might be a solution, I am going to have to try when I get home this evening.
 
Zarathustra[H];1041925220 said:
No, this is not a MBR vs GPT issue. It has nothing to do with the partition table. (at least not directly)

Intel PCIe SSD 750, like most PCIe SSD's, will only boot in UEFI mode. The traditional BIOS boot options are not available, so I needed to find a way to create the EFI partition in order to make my old images bootable.
I own one of those drives so I understand what you mean now. It can only operate as a GPT disk.

Windows is installed differently on a MBR disk than a GPT disk.

I'm not even sure if this is possible but you could just do a volume recovery onto the new disk rather than image based recovery. Then boot to a Windows 10 disc and run a startup repair.

Pulling down the image is just going to put the MBR scheme on the SSD which will not work.
 
I'm not even sure if this is possible but you could just do a volume recovery onto the new disk rather than image based recovery. Then boot to a Windows 10 disc and run a startup repair.

Appreciate the help! Could you explain this "volume recovery" a little further? How do I go about doing this? Do I have to have done anythign (like backed up a volume) inside of Windows prior to doing this?

I've been predominantly on Linux for the last 15 years or so, so I am not hip to the latest Windows tips and tricks.

Thanks,
Matt
 
I mean a volume level recovery as in not disk image but just copying the volume from backup medium to the restore point.

Without knowing what product your using to backup I can only use generic terminology.
 
Ugh. This is driving me absolutely nuts.

I have an efi partition, and I am using BCDBOOT to recreate the efi record as shown in numerous guides online and it still refuses to work.

Makes me want to stab whomever came up with UEFI.
 
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joo lost me somewhere,mang.
On the bright side..I can install any OS i want to in about 2 minutes :D
Win 10..um..I guess it could be done..but why?
 
Ugh.

I've been working in this for two days now, and still no luck.

Losing my partition images and starting from scratch is simply not an option. I have too much time invested in them.

There HAS TO be a way to get this to work.
 
I don't mean to be ignorant (we all are to various degrees, natively) but have you tried something similar to what's discussed here in the comments:

https://4sysops.com/archives/how-to-convert-windows-8-from-bios-to-uefi/

specifically the methodology laid out by poster "Dualjob" ? That seems to be a practical solution - I mean, you can image what you've got or at least get it backed up in some respect before you go about this procedure I would guess (seems you have covered that base already). I believe the real secret to all of it lies in the last few commands that must be done in that precise sequence or else you end up with a non-bootable MBR partition, so definitely follow the instructions as listed and in that specific order too.

While my particular laptop is UEFI capable I leave that disabled and probably won't ever make use of it anytime soon; Windows 7 will be my OS for the next few years even in spite of Microsoft's rather invasive push towards Windows 10 on those of us that just think (and know, to some degrees) that Windows 7 is still better. ;)
 
So,

I think I have figured out my problem.

It is not that the EFI partition and Windows boot loader can't see my restored partition. It can. I have confirmed this.

Once it attempts to load it - however - something goes wrong.

Googling around a bit, (notably, last post in this thread) one suggestion is that Windows - when installed in BIOS/MRB mode, does not add the appropriate drivers to the startup sequence.

This is confusing me, because Windows 8 and 10 are supposed to have native NVMe support, but it is possible the drivers are just in the driver store and installed when needed, and as such are not available at boot time in a traditional non-UEFI install.

So it looks like what I have to do is find a way to boot back into my partition image on a separate drive (can I do this from my USB dock maybe?) force install all NVMe and UEFI boot drivers (if I can figure out what they are) and then try again.

Will work on this when I get home after work.
 
goddamn...you are a glutton for punishment dude, this sounds like head banging on the desk misery
 
goddamn...you are a glutton for punishment dude, this sounds like head banging on the desk misery

It is, but as I see it it is less misery that having to reinstall everything, drivers and all, get all my custom symlinks for my RAMDisk working again, and then get all my settings in all my installed games just right again, including mouse sensitivity which is so difficult and time consuming to get right.

I feel like I SHOULD be able to just copy game config files for this, but for whatever reason, this rarely seems to work right.

It's just frustrating because I take all these precautions and image everything regularly, just so I never have to have this problem, and now because of poor design lacking a way to migrate, the official response (both from Intel and Microsoft) is just "we recommend a clean install". Simply unacceptable.
 
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Zarathustra[H];1041927169 said:
Googling around a bit, (notably, last post in this thread) one suggestion is that Windows - when installed in BIOS/MRB mode, does not add the appropriate drivers to the startup sequence.

This is confusing me, because Windows 8 and 10 are supposed to have native NVMe support, but it is possible the drivers are just in the driver store and installed when needed, and as such are not available at boot time in a traditional non-UEFI install.

So it looks like what I have to do is find a way to boot back into my partition image on a separate drive (can I do this from my USB dock maybe?) force install all NVMe and UEFI boot drivers (if I can figure out what they are) and then try again.

Will work on this when I get home after work.

And this did it! :)

So to summarize the steps to accomplish this, they are as follows.

1.) Install Intel 750 PCIe SSD.

2.) Boot from existing Windows install

3.) Install Intels SSD 750 NVMe drivers from their webpage, and install Intels SSD utility.

4.) Use the Intel SSD utility to update the firmware on the PCIe drive.

5.) Shut down and boot up your Windows Install Disk / USB, making sure the install disk is booting in UEFI mode.

6.) Do a fresh Windows install to the new PCIe SSD. Once complete, make sure you can boot into it.

7.) Shut down and boot up in your favorite rescue disk / live OS.

8.) Delete primary Windows partition on new PCIe drive, but leave all the small partitions in place.

9.) Copy Windows partition you want to keep from old drive to new drive.

10.) Shut down, and boot back up to Windows install disk/usb making sure you are in UEFI mode, and go to console.

11.) Do the diskpart and BCDBOOT steps as described here.


Viola! :p
 
And this did it! :)

Viola! :p

So did you figure out if the drivers were installed on not? I did slightly different, I started with a blank disk, using USB UEFI image and booting into the USB and started install, after it copied some files I did not let it continue, but instaled booted into AOEMI backup recovery USB boot drive and had it copy over the MBR image I had made earlier onto the main UEFI partition. Then rebooted again to the AOEMI recover USB drive and did a boot recovery. The problems seem to be every GPT partition has a unique ID and even a restore will change this ID and the software thinks it can nto find the boot partition to boot of off.. I suppose if you can edit the proper GOT partition ID into the boot structure it might work but it is a long string to type in easily. Once it even recreated the EFI partition AFTER the main partition and it was a pain to move to the efi partition before the main pariton using EasyUEFI which seems more intuitive to see where the boot is happening from. The main problem seems to be you must boot as UEFI mode to be able to install and use it, If you boot as MBR, then you can not access the UEFI modes. Booting from the USB, I always had to select UEFI mode, mistaking it and booting it as MBR and doing anything would not work. Going back to MBR is a lot easier though but still need to do the boot recovery so the boot procedures work properly. Yes you can go from UEFI image to MBR by not selecting entire disk restore and only using the main partition restore. I used the same MBR to UEFI image so not sure if the drivers anf files needed were already in the image or if they were missing if you only directly installed a UEFI booting partition. Windows uses an extra boot file for UEFI which is on the EFI partiion and not the main operating system partition from what I saw.
 
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