1.5TB External HDD shows in Win7 as EFI Partition, but only in WinOS

jumanji · 11 Jan 2016

OK, some quick instructions.

Run Partition Wizard again. On the Disk Map of your 1.82 TB external drive ( It looks like it is a 2TB drive and not 1.5TB)

Right click on the KILLUMINATI-ONE 1862.9GB partition and then click on Set Inactive. If it shows as Operation Pending in the left Pane of PW, go to the Top Menu Bar and click on APPLY. Once the operation is completed, close PW and reboot your PC. Tell us what you see after that.

I am again vanishing for sometime and see your response post when I return. This time I may take more time to return.:)

cowboyuptx · 11 Jan 2016

jumanji said:

OK, some quick instructions.

Run Partition Wizard again. On the Disk Map of your 1.82 TB external drive ( It looks like it is a 2TB drive and not 1.5TB)

Right click on the KILLUMINATI-ONE 1862.9GB partition and then click on Set Inactive. If it shows as Operation Pending in the left Pane of PW, go to the Top Menu Bar and click on APPLY. Once the operation is completed, close PW and reboot your PC. Tell us what you see after that.

I am again vanishing for sometime and see your response post when I return. This time I may take more time to return.:)

You got it coach! Take all the time you need. I will get right on those instructions.

EDIT: Okay, so I tried to do as you instructed, but the "set active/inactive" options were greyed out and could not be selected for "KILLUMINATI-ONE 1862.9GB partition"... The option was readily available for all of my other HDDs, but not that one.

jumanji · 12 Jan 2016

hmmm.......... If it is possible, connect your external drive to another system running just Windows 7, run PW on it and see whether you can set it inactive. Can you do it?

jumanji · 12 Jan 2016

OK, after doing some google search I have come to the conclusion that it may well nigh be impossible to turn the EFI System Partition inactive or we still do not know how to do it.

It is also said that one cannot delete the EFI system partition also easily. The only way to get rid of it is to use Diskpart Clean/cleanall and then format it.

cant set old hdd inactiv But SSD runs perfect by itself.

How to delete a protected EFI disk partition with Windows 7 or 8 | WinAbility Software

Again diskpart clean/cleanall is a destructive process in which you will lose all data.

So our original recommendation holds: Backup all data to another drive and then format the external drive that has the EFI System Partition.

To format after backing up, do a diskpart cleanall on that drive and then do a regular format.

If you are going that way be sure that you select the correct drive to clean. ( We have had many cases here where the OPs accidentally performed it on a wrong drive and then rushed here on how to recover the lost data)

For that reason I do not generally recommend diskpart clean/cleanall to any user.The same (writing zeros to all sectors) can be done by using the HDD Lowlevel Format Tool HDDGURU: HDD LLF Low Level Format Tool . Use the Windows executable version 4.40 (works without installation). It has a visual GUI interface where you can select the drive by name and carryout the Low level Format. Since it is a 2TB drive it will take a long time but you can watch the progress in the progress bar.

You can see the HDD Low level Format Tool screenshots in my post here Recover data from an accidental diskpart / clean command ( Note: In this thread the OP was advised to initialise it as GPT and format it since his drive was larger than 2TB)

After lowlevel formatting is complete, format your drive the way you want (I would suggest initialisation as MBR) and then you can transfer all the data back into it if you want. ( Always copy, do not move. Do not cut and paste. Keep the backed up data in the new for a while until you are sure the transfer is all OK and you can access it without any problem.)

cowboyuptx · 13 Jan 2016

jumanji said:

OK, after doing some google search I have come to the conclusion that it may well nigh be impossible to turn the EFI System Partition inactive or we still do not know how to do it.

It is also said that one cannot delete the EFI system partition also easily. The only way to get rid of it is to use Diskpart Clean/cleanall and then format it.

cant set old hdd inactiv But SSD runs perfect by itself.

How to delete a protected EFI disk partition with Windows 7 or 8 | WinAbility Software

Again diskpart clean/cleanall is a destructive process in which you will lose all data.

So our original recommendation holds: Backup all data to another drive and then format the external drive with EFI System Partition.

To format after backing up, do a diskpart cleanall on that drive and then do a regular format.

If you are going that way be sure that you select the correct drive to clean. ( We have had many cases here where the OPs accidentally performed it on a wrong drive and then rushed here on how to recover the lost data)

For that reason I do not generally recommend diskpart clean/cleanall to any user.The same (writing zeros to all sectors) can be done by using the HDD Lowlevel Format Tool HDDGURU: HDD LLF Low Level Format Tool . Use the Windows executable version 4.40 (works without installation). It has a visual GUI interface where you can select the drive by name and carryout the Low level Format. Since it is a 2TB drive it will take a long time but you can watch the progress in the progress bar.

See my post here on how to : Recover data from an accidental diskpart / clean command ( Note: In this thread the OP was advised to initialise it as GPT and format it since his drive was larger than 2TB)

After lowlevel formatting is complete, format your drive the way you want (I would suggest initialisation as MBR) and then you can transfer all the data back into it if you want. ( Always copy, do not cut and paste. Keep the backed up data for a while until you are sure the transfer is all OK and you can access it without any problem.)

Well, I wish there were a better soluti0on, but I believe that if there were one, you probably would have found it. At least it still works in Linux, and it shouldn't be too much longer before I can afford to by another 2TB to back it up to so I can format the drive... I appreciate all of your efforts! Take care Jumanji, God bless...