[BUG] EFI Partition reported in backups where there are none!
ATIH 2016 b5586
In order to figure out the issue and reproduce behaviours I've reported here: https://forum.acronis.com/forum/97791
I relied on my old ATIH 2015 backups I made specificially as NON UEFI compliant. Means:
Once I've made backups of Windows 8.1 as non UEFI (I label the partitions BIOS / MBR) and also a backup of a Windows 8.1 UEFI compliant installation (not part of this documentation), in addition a Windows 7 non UEFI and Windows XP non UEFI backup.
When mounting the files now with ATIH b5586 I have the problem that all backups except the Windows XP backup contain a EFI parititon while this is technically impossible!
How come that Acronis? I assume that ATIH labels the MSR partition as EFI partition, because other than an EFI partition those Windows 8.1 and Windows 7 backups are definitely MBR based and only have an MSR partition, but not EFI parititon.
This behaviour is reproducible in the Linux recovery environment (booted in UEFI mode) and when using the TIB mounter in Windows.
ATIH 2016, makes the user believe that those backups are GPT UEFI compliant while they are not and basically ATIH should ask the user whether he wants to convert them upon restore.
This does not happen at all. I haven't carried out the restores but I am pretty sure those would have been MBR partitions.
Please also refer this threads:
https://forum.acronis.com/forum/97785
https://forum.acronis.com/forum/95703
If you need backups for internal testing of the MBR / GPT conversion mechanics let me know.
The MSR partition is not visible from True Image and is not included in the backup archives. Those are definitely EFI system partitions. If those were MBR disks they would include an active partition. There are no active partitions in the screenshots with the EFI system partitions. They were probably created when your were testing the restoration of MBR disk images while booted in UEFI mode.
This is the other backup of an UEFI compliant Win 8.1 installation I talked about in the original post. You will notice that this included an EFI System-Partition as well as an recovery partition.
"They were probably created when your were testing the restoration of MBR disk images while booted in UEFI mode."
You are right again about those MSR partitions... but the EFI partitions should not be shown at this state as they are NOT in the backup file. MBR disks do not have EFI partitions - do they?
Another evidence that there is something wrong. When I try to restore the 8.1 BIOS backup I get a notification in Windows that the layout remains GPT (again this backup was never a GPT backup) but as you said both are GPT backups I want to point out again it cannot be the case for Windows 7 as Win 7 does not support to be booted from GPT and when trying to restore it in Windows the message I pointed out a sentence before does not show up.
There is definitely something wrong. I am 100 % sure about all 3 backups were non GPT and I haven't touched them since February.
Karl,
The attached link is a lengthy read however, I think you would benefit a great deal from reading through it.
http://rmroberts.com/FTP_files/CSR2012/MBRandEFIDiskPartitionSystemsMay…
Yes it is, great source. But it does not explain to me why my MBR disks have EFI partitions and not the usual MSR / system reserved partition.
This was interesting too:
"Note: You can only boot from an EFI type of firmware system to a GPT type disk when
using the 64-bit versions of Windows XP, Vista or 7 operating systems.
I knew that you can modify a Win 7 64 bit DVD to boot in UEFI mode but afaik still Win 7 will not allow an installation of the OS on a GPT drive.
In addition
A disk initialized as a GPT disk must contain a MSR partition
Removal of the ESP or the MSR partition can result in boot failure.
These both sentences makes makes it not understandable why Acronis does not show the MSR partition in the backup not backing it up as Joey pointed out previously.
Karl,
You stated:
"Yes it is, great source. But it does not explain to me why my MBR disks have EFI partitions and not the usual MSR / system reserved partition."
Even though TI shows these partitions to be EFI I think they are in fact ESP partitions. Such partitions are created on disk by the Extensible Firmware Interface on the system UEFI based motherboard. On your disk these partitions are 100MB in size whereas an EFI partition is typically 128MB in size. "The ESP partition is typically 100 MB, the MSR partition is typically 128 GB." (Taken from the first sentence of page 7 of the PDF).
The PDF also points out that these 2 nomenclatures are often interchanged among manufacturers and I believe this is true here. Your motherboard being a UEFI based board is responsible for creating these partitions so that: "The partition designated UEFI system partition is used to contain the boot loader program. After completing the POST, the control of the computer is passed from the firmware (BIOS) to the boot loader program. The boot loader program starts the proprietary operating system such as Windows or Linux, and then loads the remaining portions of the operating system." (Taken from the 3rd paragraph of page 8 of the PDF). "The MSR partition is not created when Windows is installed on an existing hard disk drive that was already partitioned."(taken from the ESP/MSR Partition Creation section of page 9 of the PDF).
You stated:
This was interesting too:
"Note: You can only boot from an EFI type of firmware system to a GPT type disk when using the 64-bit versions of Windows XP, Vista or 7 operating systems."
Below was taken from last paragraph page 3 of the PDF.
Both Windows XP and Server 2003 can read or write data to a GPT disk but XP cannot boot from a GPT partition. Windows Vista, Windows 7 and Server 2008, can read write and boot from a GPT disk.
You stated:
"I knew that you can modify a Win 7 64 bit DVD to boot in UEFI mode but afaik still Win 7 will not allow an installation of the OS on a GPT drive."
If the disk is first Initialized as a GPT disk then Win 7 will allow an installation on a GPT drive. This MUST be done using an original Windows DVD install disc or an ISO image created on a DVD disc as attempting this using a USB flash drive may not work due to driver issues. See the link below for more details:
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/186875-uefi-unified-extensible-fir…
Hi Enchantech,
I understand the document you sent me but this does not solve my issue. I think rather than discussing technical details I will do some non uefi installations and report back how ATIH behaves. Still I can only say that those backups were non UEFI backups in the first line.