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I thought an EFI System Partition that boots Windows (specifically Win10, but I think the concept is the similar for all NT-based Windows) was a unique type of EFI system partition that can only be made using a Windows repair disk and the command line therein. However, I'm getting the feeling I'm being a bit narrow-minded.

Do things work more along the lines of:

  1. create the EFI System Partition using an arbitrary partitioning software, i.e. a Linux tool, Windows repair disk command-line (diskpart), or self-booting application

and then

  1. load magical Windows-booting data using the automatic Startup Repair found on a Windows repair disk or using commands with Windows repair disk command-line, i.e. bcdboot?
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  • Here is a page that describes converting a BIOS-booting Windows installation to boot in EFI mode. Also, once everything's working, you can back up the EFI System Partition (ESP) using just about any file-level backup tool (such as cp or tar in Linux, COPY or zip in Windows, etc.). With the backup in hand, you can restore the files using any convenient tool to create a fresh ESP if the original is damaged. This is a useful precaution on any EFI-bootable computer running any OS.
    – Rod Smith
    Commented Sep 29, 2015 at 17:00

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You are right - EFI System Partition(ESP) on GPT disk can be created with any disk management tool which is GPT capable.

ESP is used for storing boot related data not only for Windows but for also for other OS like Ubuntu, Fedora, Mint etc. On Linux descendants there are plenty of disk editors which can edit GPT disks. On Windows there are also plenty of free tools which can handle GPT partitions.

During Windows installation another partition is created - MSR - Microsoft Reserved partition. This partition is exactly 128 MB.

See Configure UEFI/GPT-Based Hard Drive Partitions by Using Windows PE and DiskPart for details.

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