How to backup EFI boot partition in Windows and Ubuntu Linux. Follow this ariticle, you can find easy ways to create backup for EFI partition.
What is EFI system partition? An EFI partition (also called ESP), is short for extensive firmware interface partition, plays an important part of a computer or physical server. It stores bootloaders, apps, and d-river to guarantee the success of the boot of your device.
Thus, once the EFI system partition gets corrupted or lost due to malware infection, human misoperation, improper system installation, etc. your Windows or Linux system can’t boot up successfully.
There is no direct way to backup EFI boot partition. But you can create a system backup image, that includes the EFI partition.
To easily back up your EFI / system partition, you can turn to a professional third-party backup software – AOMEI Cyber Backup. And you can also use the Windows built-in Backup and Restore feature to protect your EFI files.
AOMEI Cyber Backup, is a professional Windows backup service. It helps you easily backup your system backup including the EFI files to a local path, external disk, or network location. With its user-friendly interface to safeguard your EFI system partition. It makes EFI partition backup a breeze with its user-friendly interface.
You can click the download button below to install it. Then we will show you how to use this tool.
Step 1. Run AOMEI Cyber Backup. Choose the Source Device on the left side of the window. And click Windows.
Step 2. Click Add Windows Device button. Enter the device’ s IP or name, username and password. Click the confirm button.
Step 3. To backup your EFI partition, click Backup task > Create New Task.
Step 4. Choose the System Backup as the backup type. Enter a task name.
Step 5. You can choose a local path or external drive, Nas drive as the destination. Fill in other details, like backup schedule, Backup Cleanup according to need. Click Start Backup.
Wait for the process to get finished. To restore your backup, you can go to Backup Task. And choose a device backup > click the “3-dot” icon > choose “Restore”.
This is a feature embedded in each Windows operating system. This method is designed for Windows user. Follow the steps below.
Step 1. Click Start button > Control Panel > System and Security > Backup and Restore. Or you can directly type “Backup and Restore” on the search bar and click the outcome.
Step 2. When the Backup and Restore program runs, click Create a system image.
Step 3. Then choose the backup target location in the next window. And click Next.
Step 4. Now it will notify you the C partition and the EFI system partition will be backed up. Click the Start backup button.
Wait for the backup process to get finished. It may take twenty to thirteen minutes, but it usually depends on the size of system partition and the PC performance.
To backup EFI boot partition on Linux, you can follow the steps below. You can create a backup directory and use the “cp” command to copy your EFI to it. Here are the detailed steps.
Step 1. Open a terminal emulator on your Linux system. You may need superuser (root) privileges to perform.
Step 2. Run lsblk or fdisk -l command. And identify the EFI partition. Usually the partition is label as EFI System Partition or ESP.
Step 3. Create a temporary mount point and mount the EFI partition with the command the below screenshot shows.
Please replace the /dev/sdXY with the actual device and partition number for your EFI partition.
Step 4. Use mkdir command to create a directory in which you store the EFI boot partition backup.
Step 5. Then you can backup the EFI to the created directory with cp command.
Step 6. Wait for the EFI files copied to the backup directory, then unmount the EFI partition with sudo unmount /mnt/efi command.
Notes: • If you want to compress the backup, you can use a compression tool like tar. For instance, you can create a compressed backup named “efi_backup.tar.gz”.
• To ensure the safety of backup, it is recommended that to save the backup to an external hard drive. • To restore EFI partition in Linux, you can also use the cp commands to copy backup to your EFI partition.
Creating an EFI system partition is valuable if you encounter a boot problem, modify your ESP, or when upgrading your system. It can easily recover your system once anything goes wrong.
You can follow the methods in this post to backup your EFI partition. If you are using a Windows and need to backup multiple Windows workloads, AOMEI Cyber Backup is the best choice. With the simple console, you can backup all your Windows EFI partition and manage the backups with ease.
Here we provide some frequently asked questions about EFI system partition with you.
You can have two EFI partitions. But there can only be one EFI/ESP partition that can be used by the firmware to boot your system. And if you can have more than one system, you can have multiple partitions each assigned boot for a different system.
You may want to clone EFI partition from one drive to another for backup or other uses. AOMEI Cyber Backup can help you. You can just set the other drive as the backup targeted.
Actually, Windows doesn’t allow you to directly delete EFI partition from your computer. Because the lack of your EFI system partition causes a boot failure. If you really want to