.efi File And Seperate Partition

Good day, running Windows 10 with all current updates.

I have multiple WD external hard drives. Recently one caused problems. Since I was short on capacity anyway went with a new 6TB so I could use it for full backups. Software that comes with it now includes the ability to upgrade firmware. Since one failed I decided to check and update firmware on all 6 drives. This is a bit cumbersome because only one drive can be active at the time of the update.

So starting with the oldest drive first a maybe 5 year old 250GB drive, I ran the software and got the normal alert that I can oly update one drive at a time. Upon checking I find that this drive has two partitions each with a different drive letter, the primary if drive F and other drive G. Drive G is only 500MB and contains ONLY an .efi file. If I go to the system tray I find that drive G cannot be separately ejected so there is no way to update the firmware under this condition.

I read this from the internet, which essentially says I dont need a efi partitionon an external hard drive:
What is EFI partition?
The EFI system partition (ESP) is a small partition formatted with FAT32, ususally 100MB, where stores the EFI boot loaders for the installed system and applications used by the firmware at startup. If your hard drive was initialized as GUID Partition table (GPT) partition style, it will generate an EFI system partition after installing Windows or Mac operating system (OS).

Normally, you cannot view it in File Explorer because it have no drive letter. If you delete this partition accidently, it will cause the installed system unbootable. Therefore, in order to protect this partition, Windows will not allow you to delete it easily. Nevertheless, there are situations that people want to get rid of the EFI partition.

How to delete it?
As mentioned before, the EFI partition is essential for the installed OS on the hard disk. However, for an external hard drive, you do not actually need the EFI partition... To delete this EFI partition, you can use third party free partition manager.

Its curious that my efi partition DOES have a drive letter (which I would like to otherwise use). The drive has only 48GB of data so it would be easy for ne to copy that to the C; temporarily, reformat the WD250 which should overwrite the small partitions, then copy the data back. Or do I have to use 3rd party software to delete the efi partitions.

I do not use this drive as a bootable drive, storage only.

 

As there is no OS on the drive you do not need the EFI partition and could delete it, possibly with Disk Management or if not with Minitool Partition Wizard which you can find here at MG. However at only 500mb it's not worth the effort unless you have run out of drive letters. There is no need to reformat or take any other actions re your files as they will be unaffected.