Copy system partition from UEFI-PC to none UEFI-PC

Wolfgang, welcome to these User Forums.

Your question is on a topic that I have never tried to do, and in many ways is the opposite to what other users have done when migrating between systems, where it is a lot easier to migrate from a Legacy BIOS / MBR system to one using UEFI / GPT.

If your target computer does support UEFI, then this would be an easier migration to transfer your Acronis backup of a working Windows OS partition to that computer, especially if both computers support and use Windows 10.

If your target computer is a Legacy BIOS system that does not support UEFI, then I suspect that you will have a lot more work to do with this migration, as I do not believe that ATI will produce a working non UEFI OS after the migration is complete.

If the target computer already has Windows 10 installed and working, then please make a full backup of this before attempting any migration - this is your safeguard to get back to your starting point!  If that same computer has a small Microsoft System Reserved partition associated with the working Windows 10 OS, then this should be kept as should help make the migration possible.

The approach that I would take here, assuming that the above might be true would be:

Make a full backup of your working UEFI Windows 10 OS partition on its own.

Create the Acronis bootable Rescue Media and boot the Legacy computer from this, ensuring that the media is booted in Legacy BIOS mode (not UEFI if offered).

Restore the Windows 10 OS partition to replace any existing OS partition on the target system.

Shutdown the computer and boot from the Acronis Universal Restore DVD media and let it find your restored OS and apply any device drivers deemed necessary.

Shutdown again and attempt to boot into Windows 10 to see if you can get to the desktop?

If you get a Windows BSOD, then you will probably need to boot from a Windows 10 Install DVD or USB stick and try doing a Startup Repair to associate the restored OS with the Boot Configuration Data held in the MS System Reserved partition.

Dear Steve,

thank you for your answer.

I am about to do your hints. Since I do not have time every day it takes longer. Please be patient. I will write here in the forum what I did and what the result is.

With the MediaCreationTool1803 tool I created an installation USB stick of Windows 10 professional 64 Bit German language.

I can boot the non-UEFI PC from the installation USB stick, but the internal hard disk was not recognized. For this reason I copied the driver for the internal hard disk controller to the installation USB stick. Then I could install Windows 10 professional 64 Bit to the not UEFI PC.

At the moment some drivers for hardware components of the non UEFI PC are still missing.

The UEFI PC is the notebook Asus F756UX

https://www.asus.com/de/supportonly/F756UX/HelpDesk_Manual/

Technical data see ASUS technical specification.txt

To be continued.

Hello, Steve,

Attached is a screenshot of the Target non-UEFI PC (= Fujitsu/Siemens AmiloXi 2550). The hard disk was partitioned from a clean Windows 10 Professional 64 bit installation on an empty hard drive. At the beginning, the Windows 10 Professional installation program created an 550 MB partition (Name System reserved. System, Active, Primary). I have limited the Windows 10 system partition to about 200 GB, because more data partitions will be added later.

For technical information about the non-UEFI PC (Amilo Xi 2550) the TXT file. Meanwhile I installed all Windows 64 drivers for the Amilo Xi 2550 hardware.

I have a license for Acronis True Image 2018, build 12510 and for Acronis Disk Director 12, build 12.0.3297. When I use Acronis programs I always boot from a updated bootable Acronis DVD.

There are 6 partitions on the UEFI PC (ASUS F756UX), including the EFI system partition. Therefore I cannot clone the hard disk from source PC to target PC with True Image 2018, because then the unwanted EFI system partition and the recovery partition would be on the non-UEFI PC (Fujitsu/Siemens Amilo Xi 2550). 

Question:

Which Acronis program and settings should I use to copy the Windows 10 system partition from the UEFI PC to the none UEFI PC using an extrernal USB hard drive?

Disk Director 12: Copy Volume

Volume type settings: Base, Primary volume type, Active volume type?

With Acronis True Image 2018 I can copy the Windows 10 system partition from UEFI PC with backup to file (on an external USB hard drive).

Settings: Sector by sector?

Thank you very much for your answer to my question.

Wolfgang, the 550 MB partition (Name System reserved. System, Active, Primary). on the non-UEFI drive is the Microsoft System Reserved partiton used to store the Boot Configuration Data for that Windows 10 installation.  This is the equivalent to the EFI partition on the UEFI system.

As you have a working Windows 10 system on the non-UEFI computer, I would recommend making a backup of this drive using ATI 2018 to an external backup drive before attempting to migrate the OS partition from the UEFI computer.

You should also keep copies of any device drivers you installed on the non-UEFI computer as the first action of any Acronis recovery of backup data will be to wipe the target partition, so your current Windows OS partition will be removed.

You should use ATI 2018 to make a Partition backup of just the Windows C: partition from the UEFI computer, then use the ATI 2018 Rescue Media to recover that backup to your 200GB OS partition on the non-UEFI computer.  There shouldn't be any need to use Sector-by-sector mode for the backup - this would make the backup size much larger if used.

Disk Director 12 is now some years old so is not as up to date as ATI 2018.

You will need to test whether the non-UEFI system will boot into Windows after doing the restore - there are a number of challenges that Windows will need to address - different hardware, CPU, etc plus different installed device drivers.  If you get a BSOD, then you will probably need to use the Windows Install media to perform a startup repair.

Hello, Steve,

Since I can usually only work on the problem for a few hours on weekends, I ask for your patience.

It often takes a few days until I can answer.

All drivers for hardware components of the non UEFI PC (= Fujitsu/Siemens Amilo Xi 2550) are present, working and updated.

With the command

pnputil -export-driver * C:\Amilo Backup-Treiber

I exported all driver files from the working Windows 10 professional 64 Bit on the non-UEFI PC.

dir of Amilo Backup-Treiber.txt

Question:

Which of the 10 driver directories should I integrate in the Acronis Universal Restore DVD made by Acronis Media Builder?

Thank you very much for your answer to my question.

Which of the 10 driver directories should I integrate in the Acronis Universal Restore DVD made by Acronis Media Builder?

The best answer is to keep the AUR DVD as simple as possible but have the device drivers available on a USB stick should any be required if using the AUR media.  Normally the only drivers needed would be those for the disk controller and motherboard chipset drivers, though if you have RAID involved here (as indicated by jraid_i.inf_amd64_b7fc42819bf99037 in the listing) then this may be needed.

Hallo Steve,

The bootable CD of Acronis Universal Restore, made with installed Acronis True Image 2018, build 125010 German language based on Linux can not access the internal hard disk of the non-UEFI PC Fujitsu/Siemens Amilo Xi 2550 properly, although the installation driver files of the hard disk controller JMicron JMB36X are integrated.

I made a bootable CD of Acronis Universal Restore based on Windows PE 5.0 and integrated the installation driver files of the hard disk controller JMicron JMB36X. I integrated the JMB driver installation files to boot.wim.

On the bootable USB stick with Windows 10 64 Bit installation, made by MediaCreationTool1803.exe, I integrated the JMB driver installation files to boot.wim and install.esd and I added a directory JMB with the JMB driver installation files.

I booted Acronis Universal Restore (including the JMB driver installation files), based on Windows PE 5.0  from CD and loaded manually the JMB driver. Before I started the process of Acronis Universal Restore, I connected this USB stick for automatic search of drivers.
The Report of Acronis Universal Restore says success, but after reboot the target non UEFI PC does NOT boot.

I booted the none UEFI PC with the Windows 10 64 Bit installation USB stick and tried
bootrec /scanos
bootrec /fixmbr
bootrec /fixboot
bootrec /rebuildbcd
bootsect /nt60 SYS E: /force
bootsect /nt60 SYS E: /force /mbr

All this NO success.
The none UEFI PC does NOT boot.

I attach the files of Acronis System Report from
the source, the UEFI PC (ASUS F756UX)
and the target, the none UEFI PC (Fujitsu / Siemens Amilo Xi 2550)
both PC booted by bootable Acronis Media (CD).

The size of the report file of Acronis Universal Restore is about 2.4 MB!
I can not reduce the size because it is alreada a ZIP file.
I try to split it.

Best regards

I unzipped the report file of Acronis Universal Restore (original ZIP file about 2.4 MB!)
and zipped part of it again.

Here is the part 1

Within the report file of Acronis Universal Restore ther is a directory UniversalRestore.
The 3 files in the directory UniversalRestore I ziped in 2 new ZIP-Files.

Here ist Part 1 of 2.

Within the report file of Acronis Universal Restore ther is a directory UniversalRestore.
The 3 files in the directory UniversalRestore I ziped in 2 new ZIP-Files. Here ist Part 2 of 2.

When You compare the Acronis System Report from source PC and target PC and analyze the report of Acronis Universal Restore, can you tell me what to do?

Wolfgang, the only information that may be useful from the zip files is what is shown in the SNAPAPI log where it shows the following for your MBR target system.

SNAPAPI: 14:00:00.416: Get drives status=0x0 drives: 2
SNAPAPI: 14:00:00.416: Open disk 1 handle: 0x2D3A5F0 status=0x0
SNAPAPI: 14:00:00.463: Disk 0000000002D3A5F0: Information
  Number: 1
  Device: \Device\Scsi\JRAID1Port0Path0Target0Lun0
  Name: WDC WD10JPVX-55JC3T3                    
  Bus type: 8 (RAID)
  Flags: 0x1 [ MBR ]
  Size: 1953525168:512
  BIOS number: 0x80
  Serial:      WD-WXD1EB3KMX41
  Physical block: 4096:0

This matches the drive information from the disks.txt file for that system.

DA-API report version 3

          PS         Speed IFace Hs-Bs-Tg Model                     
Num  NT    L9NO  Size FSsize Free FS     Type            Label       ABCHSV Error
---- ----- ---- ----- ----- ----- ------ --------------- ----------- ------ ----------
1-   d(?) Unkn    1G    1K ATA   1-0-0    Optiarc DVD RW AD-7540A   
                   1G             Unknow                             ------
2-   d(0) MBR   932G    1K SATA  4-0-0    WDC WD10JPVX-55J          
                                  MBR                                -----v
  -1  p(1) --CD  549M  549M    0b NTFS   07 NTFS, HPFS   ........... A-c--v
  -2  p(2) --DC  200G  200G    0b NTFS   07 NTFS, HPFS   ........... --c--v
                 731G             unallc                             ------

Disk 2 above is the same WDC WD10JPVX drive.

The question mark here for me is why this drive is using RAID for the SATA controller mode?

Dear Steve,

The none UEFI PC (Amilo Xi 2550) has 4 hard disk controllers:

1. The hard disk controller of the motherboard Intel chipset. Only the DVD drive is connected to it via IDE Primary/Master.

2, A JMB36X soldered to the motherboard for one internal SATA hard disk.

3. A second JMB36X on a small board connected via cable for the other internal SATA hard disk.

4. A soldered Sil3531 for the external eSATA connector.

The JMB36X prevents an SSD from being recognized as an SSD in both BIOS and Windows and the usual features (TRIM, etc.) are unavailable.

It is not possible to switch off hard disks via the BIOS or the JMB36X.

I don't have the knowledge to know if the JMB36X uses RAID or not. But I think it is configured to no RAID.

 Tab] at the very beginning of the Power On Self Test: The RAID menu is displayed:

JMicron Technology Corp.     PCIE-to-SATAII/IDE RAIN Controller BIOS v.1.06.74
Model Name     Capacity Type/Status
[ Main Menu ]  [ Hard Disk Drive List ]
Create RAID Disk Drive  HDD0: WDC WD10JPVX-J55    1000 GB Non-RAID
Delete RAID Disk Drive  HDD1: WDC WD10JPVX-J55    1000 GB Non-RAID
Revert HDD to Non-RAID
Solve Mirror Conflict
Rebuild Mirror Drive
Save and Exit Setup
Exit without Saving

[RAID Disk Drive List ]
- empty -

[ Disk Information ]
Model:  WDC WD10JPVX-5JC3T35
Serial:  WD-WX21ECK7762
Firmware:  01.01A01
Capacity:  1000 GB
Channel:  SATA Port 0
Transfer:  UDMA Mode 2
Addressing:  48-bit LBA
Support 3G:  YES
RAID Config:  Non-RAID

[ Disk Information ]
Model:  WDC WD10JPVX-5JC3T35
Serial:  WD-WXD1EB3KMX41
Firmware:  01.01A01
Capacity:  1000 GB
Channel:  SATA Port 1
Transfer:  UDMA Mode 2
Addressing:  48-bit LBA
Support 3G:  YES
RAID Config: Non-RAID

For copying the system partition from the UEFI PC (ASUS) to the none UEFI PC (Amilo Xi 2550) I removed one internal hard drive of the Amilo!

To be continued.

Dear Steve,

I stop solving my Problem with Acronis Universal Restore
because I don't have time until at least end of November 2018.

I bought 3 licenses for Acronis True Image 2019 and will try it with version 2019 in November.

---------------------------

===============================================
I found a working solution to my problem without Acronis software.
===============================================

This is:

With Dism.exe (from Microsoft Windows 10 Professional 64 Bit) I create an Install.wim
with the contents of the whole Windows system partition.
The UEFI Windows partition occupies 107 GB.
The size of the Install.wim is 46 GB.

To creation of the Install.wim faster and more secure, you should:
Disable WLAN
Disconnect the LAN cable.
Exit all other programs.
Close the antivirus program or deactivate it until restart.

The running Windows must copy itself, so you must first create a shadow copy with vshadow64.exe (from Microsoft).
The shadow copy of the Windows system partition is copied into the Install.wim.

With MediaCreationTool1803.exe (from Microsoft) I create a USB stick from which I can boot UEFI PC and not UEFI PC and from which I am able to install Microsoft Windows 10 Professional 64 Bit. A maximum 32 GB FAT32 partition on the USB stick is created.

Since the FAT32 partition is too small and even a very large FAT32 partition cannot store a 46 GB Install.wim, I have to create an NTFS boot medium for the Windows installation.
This NTFS boot medium does not boot to UEFI-PC!
But I can boot the not UEFI-PC with the NTFS boot medium.

On an external USB hard disk a primary and active NTFS partition is created and made bootable with bootsect /nt60 X: /force.
All files and directories from the Windows installation USB stick are copied to this bootable external USB hard disk.
I deleted the file \sources\Install.esd on the USB stick.
The 46 GB Install.wim is copied to the sources directory.
The Windows installation doesn't care if there is an Install.esd or an Install.wim.

With Dism.exe the JMB driver is integrated into the \sources\Boot.wim, in index 1 and in index 2.
With Dism.exe the JMB driver is integrated into the \sources\Install.wim. Here there is only the index 1.

As a precaution I have created a directory with the JMB driver installation files on the external USB hard disk.
As a precaution I loaded the JMB driver manually during the Windows installation. I do not know if this is necessary.

With the external USB hard disk I boot the not UEFI-PC. 

From now on everything runs like a normal Windows installation,
but the 46 GB Install.wim creates on the non UEFI PC everything as it was on the UEFI Windows system partition.
With all directories, files, settings, configurations, installed programs, etc..

Only in very few exceptions I have to reinstall a program.

Since I continue to use the UEFI PC,
I have bought and entered a new license key for Windows and all installed programs.

If you want more detailed information about my working solution to the problem, please send me an email.

Best regards,
Wolfgang Menzel

Wolfgang, thank you for your comprehensive update on your actions here.  I can only praise you for your tenacity in finding a solution that works for you here, which is beyond my own knowledge and understanding - so very well done!!

Dear Steve,

I can explain to you and others in detail what I did for a working solution for a NOT UEFI PC
and the exact command input.

There is a graphical frontend for Dism.exe. For me I found one in German language.

vshadow64.exe is part of the finished solution WIMage from the German computer magazine C'T / heise.de. Therefore I have the bat-files.