Installed Win 7 Ult x64 on mSata SSD, EFI System Part on other drive?

I'm a wizard :)

seriously though, I am now more confused then ever. It's like I am happy my computer is running fine and great..but nervous as I apparently have a loophole lol.

that sounds like you have it right Greg.

gregrocker said:

Somehow OP installed Win7 in UEFI mode on SSD creating no EFI partitions, so when he unplugged the HD it would not boot. He then copied the 500mb EFI partition onto the SSD and it booted.

I was hoping you could shed some light on what happened here, Ray. How is this possible? Will it boot off of EFI partitions on another HD? Why was it only necessary to copy one EFI partition over, and no repairs were necessary?

Please correct this if I got any of it wrong, Champ.

The MSR partition was made on SSD for GPT, but boot files where installed to the Windows 8 UEFI System Resevered partition on the HDD.
As we always say, install with only ONE HDD.

What about the second UEFI partition that's normally required? Can there only be one?

gregrocker said:

What about the second UEFI partition that's normally required? Can there only be one?

Windows 7 only has one + MSR, Windows 8 has two + MSR.

theog said:

gregrocker said:

Somehow OP installed Win7 in UEFI mode on SSD creating no EFI partitions, so when he unplugged the HD it would not boot. He then copied the 500mb EFI partition onto the SSD and it booted.

I was hoping you could shed some light on what happened here, Ray. How is this possible? Will it boot off of EFI partitions on another HD? Why was it only necessary to copy one EFI partition over, and no repairs were necessary?

Please correct this if I got any of it wrong, Champ.

The MSR partition was made on SSD for GPT, but boot files where installed to the Windows 8 UEFI System Resevered partition on the HDD.
As we always say, install with only ONE HDD.

yea that is teh thing..I seriously don't remember if I took out the HDD before installing to the SSD. I "thought" I had but obviously if I had...the SSD would have gotten a boot partition, right?

Thought I do recall even with these problems of seeing the boot flag on the SSD partition.

Thanks Ray. That pretty much clears it up.

Interesting that it required no repairs to make the UEFI partition bootable once it was copied to the SSD. Is this to be expected with UEFI, Ray? Or did you run Startup Repair after copying it, Champ?

gregrocker said:

Thanks Ray. That pretty much clears it up.

Interesting that it required no repairs to make the UEFI partition bootable once it was copied to the SSD. Is this to be expected with UEFI, Ray? Or did you run Startup Repair after copying it, Champ?

As the Windows Boot Manager partition, which was copied over, I will say YES.
Based on
Migrate BIOS x64 install to UEFI.

I did not run the Fix Startup after copying it over. I ran a chkdsk to make sure my drives were ok, but that was it.