In my former laptop (HHD, MBR) I regularly backed up the system, i.e. drive C:\. In case Windows crashed or seriously malfunctioned I only restored the previous version. I didn’t bother with the data drive on the same disk; that was never affected whatever happened to the OS. Recently I bought a new laptop (SSD, GPT). I migrated my system, yet I found an additional drive A:\ on the disk. I found out it is an EFI drive for boot, independent of the OS. If so, I still should back up C:\ only, leave the EFI partition just like the data partition; restore of these would only give back the very same. When I started the backup though, Paragon HDD Manager offered to take A:\ along with C:\. Why? Are these two drives still coupled somehow? What is the advantage / disadvantage of backing up both, or C:\ only? Thanks a lot.
I see that. My question is if I should back up the EFI drive along with the system drive, or may I leave it as I do the data drive.
Do you mean the whole disk? That is 500GB. The system drive is 70GB, the EFI is 0.1GB. In my former laptop I only backed up the system. Now I wonder if I also need the EFI. It's not the size but the functionality. For 500 though, it's also the size. I hope I don't need to save all data every week.
It's at least the latest one, with support for modern ciphers like SHA2 and BLAKE3. Unlike e. g. Veracrypt, it's not a main project of the author, unfortunately.
If it is a full backup, it is enough to back up the OS, but when the scenario involves replacing new hardware, it will be a lot of trouble. If you only back up the OS, you only need to use software such as DISM++to repair the read boot after restoring the OS. Of course, make sure that your EFI partition still exists after restoring the OS. Another point is that restoring a partition will change the partition signature in rare cases. At this time, it is almost necessary to repair the boot. In the UEFI/GPT environment, this means that you need to format the EFI partition and then repair the boot. Have you realized that? If you will repair the boot after the restore, it is not necessary to back up the EFI partition. Sometimes the EFI partition that already has the boot information will be an obstacle to restore the normal operation of the system.
I've managed to back up and restore the OS but now I have two EFI partitions, both are void, 100% free. What does it mean? Could I delete these and rely on the backup / restore of the OS? Or what?