6 votes

Is it possible to expand my Windows EFI partition?

Posted by kari
Tags: linux, self post, ask.advice, windows, tech support

I currently dual-boot Arch and Windows and just use the Windows EFI partition in Arch as well, however I only have about 13 MB of space left on it.

I’d like to try installing Gentoo on an extra SSD I have with nothing on it, but don’t really want to have a second EFI partition if I can avoid it.

So my question is, can I shrink the Windows main partition towards the right and expand the the Windows EFI partition into the newly freed space?

6 comments

  1. [2]
    admicos
    Link
    Shrinking the Windows partition (left, i believe) can be done pretty safely with Windows's diskmgmt.msc If the EFI partition is the first on the drive (it probably is), you need to move the now...
    • Shrinking the Windows partition (left, i believe) can be done pretty safely with Windows's diskmgmt.msc
    • If the EFI partition is the first on the drive (it probably is), you need to move the now shrunk(?) partition (and your Arch partition, if you don't have enough free space before it) to the right, which I don't think Windows's tool does. Gparted will do that, but I believe it takes a long time and I am not sure how well it keeps your data intact
    • If you did those, expanding EFI partition should be somewhat trivial, also with Gparted
    4 votes
    1. kari
      Link Parent
      Thanks! I’ll give it a shot with GParted then, probably. I already had to reinstall Windows last week while troubleshooting a different issue so no big deal if I end up breaking something and...

      Thanks! I’ll give it a shot with GParted then, probably. I already had to reinstall Windows last week while troubleshooting a different issue so no big deal if I end up breaking something and having to re-install.

      2 votes
  2. [3]
    vord
    (edited )
    Link
    I know windows might get screwy with EFI partitions, but I did a full migration of my EFI partition to another drive and then back which worked well. If you have spare drives and are feeling...

    I know windows might get screwy with EFI partitions, but I did a full migration of my EFI partition to another drive and then back which worked well.

    If you have spare drives and are feeling brave, you could probably dd your windows partition as an alternative to gparted, which might go smoother.

    That said, I'd probably just migrate Arch off the main drive (btrfs send or raid1 online migrate works great for this...the raid 1 migrate can even survive reboots), wipe windows, recreate the EFI, reinstall windows, migrate arch back. But then I don't really do much with windows than play games that have cloud syncs, so my use case may be limited.

    There's also a chnace you could free up a ton of space in your EFI by clearing out old kernels.

    2 votes
  3. pseudolobster
    Link
    Yes, you can probably do this with diskpart. I don't necessarily trust GParted to resize NTFS partitions. I've run into problems with this in the past. I had a swapfile, hibernation file, or some...

    Yes, you can probably do this with diskpart. I don't necessarily trust GParted to resize NTFS partitions.

    I've run into problems with this in the past. I had a swapfile, hibernation file, or some other unmovable file in the way, and windows' disk management service wouldn't let me resize past where that file resided. I recall the solution was a janky defragging program called Raxco Perfect Disk, which has a "prepare partition for resize" defrag mode that will move all your files to the side. I can't recall if that worked, but it was the go-to solution on forums.

    2 votes