I used to backup and restore the whole drive w/ all the partitions on a 256GB SSD that contained the Windows 10 OS + a recovery partition + an EFI system partition.
After replacing this with a 512GB M.2 drive (smallest Samsung Pro M.2) I decided to create another partition that contains data that does not need to be backed up.
To keep the backup smaller if I simply backup and restore the Windows 10 OS partition (C) + recovery partition (hidden) + the EFI system partition will Windows 10 still boot properly?
I know I could just try it and find out for myself. But I assume others here have done this often and can confirm that there are no issues doing a backup and restore in this manner.