LinuxQuestions.org - [SOLVED] Is the second EFI partition redundant?

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Is the second EFI partition redundant?

Code:

Matthew_Wai@My-PC:~$ lsblk 

NAME  MAJ:MIN RM  SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT

sda      8:0    0 465.8G  0 disk 

├─sda1  8:1    0  100M  0 part /boot/efi

├─sda2  8:2    0    16M  0 part 

├─sda3  8:3    0  70.4G  0 part /media/Matthew_Wai/Windows 10

├─sda4  8:4    0  499M  0 part 

├─sda5  8:5    0  300M  0 part 

├─sda6  8:6    0    4G  0 part [SWAP]

├─sda7  8:7    0  75.7G  0 part /

└─sda8  8:8    0 314.8G  0 part

"sda1" was created automatically by "Windows Setup".
"sda5" was created manually by me just before I installed Linux.
Both are EFI partitions. Only "sda1" is present in "/etc/fstab" as shown below:

Code:

Matthew_Wai@My-PC:~$ cat /etc/fstab

# /dev/sda7

UUID=9c04423a-f1fa-4b10-a89d-c1d306fb50b0      /              ext4            rw,relatime    0 1



# /dev/sda1 LABEL=EFI\040system\040partition

UUID=F816-2029          /boot/efi      vfat            rw,relatime,fmask=0022,dmask=0022,codepage=437,iocharset=iso8859-1,shortname=mixed,utf8,errors=remount-ro  0 2



# /dev/sda6

UUID=a820f9da-9e3d-4215-ad17-11ada6c96053      none            swap            defaults,pri=-2 0 0

Am I right in thinking that "sda5" is redundant? If so, may I simply delete it?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Matthew Wai (Post 6395975)

[CODE]Am I right in thinking that "sda5" is redundant? If so, may I simply delete it?

Only if it is empty.

If it isn't empty, it is potentially worse in that it may be lead to confusion to the system as well as you.

Quote:

Originally Posted by syg00 (Post 6395979)

Only if it is empty.

I used "gnome-disk-utility" to mount it. Then...

Code:

Matthew_Wai@My-PC:~$ lsblk 

NAME  MAJ:MIN RM  SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT

sda      8:0    0 465.8G  0 disk 

├─sda1  8:1    0  100M  0 part /boot/efi

├─sda2  8:2    0    16M  0 part 

├─sda3  8:3    0  70.4G  0 part /media/Matthew_Wai/Windows 10

├─sda4  8:4    0  499M  0 part 

├─sda5  8:5    0  300M  0 part /media/Matthew_Wai/C80E-202D

├─sda6  8:6    0    4G  0 part [SWAP]

├─sda7  8:7    0  75.7G  0 part /

└─sda8  8:8    0 314.8G  0 part /media/Matthew_Wai/HDD

The mount point is "/media/Matthew_Wai/C80E-202D" as shown above.

Code:

Matthew_Wai@My-PC:~$ ls /media/Matthew_Wai/C80E-202D

Matthew_Wai@My-PC:~$ sudo ls /media/Matthew_Wai/C80E-202D

[sudo] password for Matthew_Wai: 

Verification successful

Matthew_Wai@My-PC:~$

Is it empty?

According to the UEFI specification (see section 5.3). the primary partition table is stored at the start of the disk and the backup partition table is stored at the end of the disk. The space in between is the usable space. Your sda5 partition will not have been used during Linux installation (only the primary partition table and backup partition table will have changed). As your sda5 shows as empty it can be safely removed.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Matthew Wai (Post 6395975)

Am I right in thinking that "sda5" is redundant? If so, may I simply delete it?

To confirm it's both unneeded and perfectly safe to remove, examine /boot/efi/EFI/. You should find directories there for Linux, for Windows, and likely one named BOOT. Each should contain at least one file used for booting.

Quote:

Originally Posted by mrmazda (Post 6396142)

examine /boot/efi/EFI/

Code:

Matthew_Wai@My-PC:~$ sudo ls /boot/efi/EFI/

[sudo] password for Matthew_Wai: 

Verification successful

Boot  Microsoft  ubuntu  UOS

And it is better to use 'ls -a -l' to check again '/sda5' in case there are any hidden files in there.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Debian6to11 (Post 6396314)

And it is better to use 'ls -a -l' to check again '/sda5' in case there are any hidden files in there.

Code:

Matthew_Wai@My-PC:~$ sudo ls -a -l /media/Matthew_Wai/C80E-202D

[sudo] password for Matthew_Wai: 

Verification successful

total 8

drwxr-xr-x  2 Matthew_Wai Matthew_Wai 4096 Jan  1  1970 .

drwxr-xr-x+ 8 root        root        4096 Dec  6 14:18 ..

That shows the partition is definitely empty and as such can be removed if you want.

Make sure you unmount it before deleting.