Is there a way to remove old EFI partitions

[Schnee_W0lf]

I had an old hard drive lying around and installed it into my computer, but it has some partitions on it that I can not use even though I formatted the entire drive. (They are old backup and EFI partitions from a previous windows that was installed on it.) I wanted to know if I can remove them so that I could use the full storage capacity of the device l. These partitions do actually take ip a fair bit of the drive unfortunately, around 200 GB.

[Tan3l6]

If you're certain the EFI partitions aren't used, then theres a lot of different partitioning tools available.

I prefer MiniTool Partition Wizard. 

And again, don't delete partitions you're not sure of what they are for.

[Schnee_W0lf]

5 minutes ago, Tan3l6 said:

If you're certain the EFI partitions aren't used, then theres a lot of different partitioning tools available.

I prefer MiniTool Partition Wizard. 

And again, don't delete partitions you're not sure of what they are for.

They are definitely not being used. My operating system runs on an NVMe. I just want to use the HDD for mass storage

[Kilrah]

2 minutes ago, Schnee_W0lf said:

They are definitely not being used.

You want to make really sure, disconnect the drive and try to boot.

 

When Windows is installed if there is already a drive in the machine with an EFI partition it'll use it instead of creating a new one on the drive it's installed on, so it's very common for the computer to actually boot from another drive than the one expected (always make sure to physically disconnect all drives other than the one you're installing to to avoid that)

[Schnee_W0lf]

2 minutes ago, Kilrah said:

You want to make really sure, disconnect the drive and try to boot.

 

When Windows is installed if there is already a drive in the machine with an EFI partition it'll use it instead of creating a new one on the drive it's installed on, so it's very common for the computer to actually boot from another drive than the one expected (always make sure to physically disconnect all drives other than the one you're installing to to avoid that)

I am rather sure it’s not in use because I could format the EFI partition on the hard drive, I just couldn’t repartition it as storage. Windows was definitely migrated off of it when I upgraded my laptop storage (the HDD in question) to SSD. The widows that was on it was also windows home and the one that my desktop is running now is win 10 pro.

If I check my bios there are multiple boot options that come up as well -I did have the HDD duel booted with windows and Ubuntu at one point- and that was not the case before I installed the HDD. The NVMe is the first boot location on the list it does also have its own recovery partition.

I will still load windows with the HDD unplugged to be sure though. Thanks for advising me  

[bezza...]

53 minutes ago, Schnee_W0lf said:

I am rather sure it’s not in use because I could format the EFI partition on the hard drive, I just couldn’t repartition it as storage. Windows was definitely migrated off of it when I upgraded my laptop storage (the HDD in question) to SSD. The widows that was on it was also windows home and the one that my desktop is running now is win 10 pro.

If I check my bios there are multiple boot options that come up as well -I did have the HDD duel booted with windows and Ubuntu at one point- and that was not the case before I installed the HDD. The NVMe is the first boot location on the list it does also have its own recovery partition.

I will still load windows with the HDD unplugged to be sure though. Thanks for advising me  

if you are sure then you can do what it says in this vid. i have done this a few times to remove windows partitions from drives that used to be a main boot drive for a pc

 

 

 

[Schnee_W0lf]

Just now, Tomberry said:

if you are sure then you can do what it says in this vid. i have done this a few times to remove windows partitions from drives that used to be a main boot drive for a pc

 

 

 

Thank you very much