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Restoring only the efi partition doesn't restore all the data

Thread solved

Windows 11, I have been experimenting with restoring to a different drive and discovered something.

If you restore only the efi partition to same or different drive, all of the data isn't transferred.

Can anyone confirm this, or give it a test.

From a windows rescue media, assign a drive letter to the SYSTEM (efi) partition.

Run the dir command in the various folders, and see the content.

Now format it to fat32 give it it's correct label (mine is SYSTEM).

Now restore that partition only (not whole drive).

Go and view the contents again and you should not see nowhere near as many files.

This is a serious issue.

And no boot.

 

Edit:

In another post I was wondering why restoring one partition at a time resulted in no boot, but the same in Macrium one at a time did boot. This has got to be the reason why.

Why would all the data not be written to that partition.  Acronis so far is the only backup software with the issue.

Yet, restoring the whole drive works fine.

 

 

 

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I think I solved it, but please reply and tell me what track 0 is in Acronis.

I selected track 0 and the efi partition together, then chose the disk to restore to and it booted fine after this.

But I have no idea what that track 0 is since the efi partition has all boot information.

Track 0 contains pointers to where information on disk / other partitions can be found, so it makes sense that this should match with the EFI partition from the same original installation and not be mixed & matched.