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Guide: Multibooting UEFI on Separate Drives

MultiBooting Win10, OS X and Ubuntu on separate drives is as simple a procedure as installing all 3 on the same drive and booting them with Clover ( See http://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/guide-multibooting-uefi.197352/ ).
What you need:

3 HDDs or SSDs or some combination of the two.
Your installation USBs:

View attachment 205199

some time and patience.

For this guide, there is no need to give detailed installation instructions for OS X - this guide already exists.
Due to the way I install the boot files for Linux, I need to install OS X before installing Ubuntu.
You can install either OS X or Win10 first. I chose to do Win10 first.

The only special thing you need to do for Win10 is create the EFI partition as the first partition on the drive and format the drive GPT partition tables. This is easiest to do with the OS X Disk Utility, but it can be done from an elevated command window at the Win10 installer screen with diskpart. If you do not know how to do it with diskpart I suggest you do it with OS X Disk Utility. Note that CSM must be enabled for the installation process.

For Win10:
Connect a drive, insert OS X Install USB, boot the system and at the POST hit the Function hotkey that allows you to select a boot device. Select the OS X Install USB. At the installation screen, select Utilities->Disk Utility and format the drive single partition GUID/Mac OS Extended (Journaled). When done, exit Disk Utility. Quit the OS X installer.
Remove the OS X Install USB and insert the Win10 USB, boot the system and at the POST hit the Function hotkey that allows you to select a boot device.
Windows shows up as USB: Win10Installer (or whatever you named the USB) and as UEFI USB: Win10Installer.
Select the UEFI USB: Win10Installer and boot the system.
At the installation screen, select Custom Install. At the next screen select the OS X partition and delete it - do not delete the EFI partition. With the resulting free space hi-lited, install Windows to the space. The installer will create and format the partitions for you. When finished, update and install your 3rd party apps and security suite. Reboot to BIOS/UEFI and disable CSM. Save&exit, continue boot to desktop. Shut down, disconnect the drive.

For OS X:
Follow the guide at http://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/u...pitan-on-any-supported-intel-based-pc.172672/

I went ahead and upgraded to Sierra PB2 while I had a new installation of El Capitan just to make sure there were no surprises with Sierra.

For Linux:
You should have created your USB for UEFI installation. If you did not, you need to go back and do this. I found Rufus to work well for this.
Normally, I would disconnect the OS X drive before installing another OS. This time, since I want to install the Linux boot loader to the UEFI folder on the OS X drive, I will leave it connected.
So, with the system shut down, connect the next drive, insert the Linux Install USB, boot the system and at the POST hit the Function hotkey that allows you to select a boot device. Select the Linux Install USB and boot the system.

At the Grub screen boot the Live Linux default and then at the desktop double-click on the install icon.
Select your language (continue).
If your system has a fast network connection, click the burger dots to install updates during the installation process (continue). For Installation type, select "Something else" (continue). You should see something like this:
View attachment 205204

sda is obviously your OS X drive, sdb is your drive for Linux. Select it, click on new partition table. This will wipe the drive to free space. Create your swap, root, home, usr partitions as you normally would for Linux.
When done, make sure you select to put the boot loader files in the sda EFI partition:
View attachment 205205

Click on Install Now and go get a cup of coffee, take a bathroom break, do something else while Linux installs.
When the installation is complete, you will need to reboot. At the post, go ahead and hit the Function key to select the Linux drive to boot to finish the installation and create your user. Remove the install USB. Update if you did not select to update during install, download any apps you want, set the system up and get it working for you as you wish it to. When done, shutdown. Connect the Windows drive.

With all 3 OSs installed and all 3 drives connected boot to the UEFI BIOS and make the OS X drive first in BBS boot order.
When Clover screen shows you will only see icons for OS X and Windows. We will fix this with a config.plist edit.
Choose the OS X icon and boot to desktop. You will need to download Xcode or your favorite plist editor for this next step.
Mount the EFI partition and navigate to the config.plist. Open the config.plist in Xcode and add this entry:

View attachment 205207
Save the config.plist, quit Xcode and reboot. You will see this:
View attachment 205208

and this:
View attachment 205209

And that, my children is just how simple it is.

View attachment 205210

There is just one slight annoying problem I have not solved yet in Sierra: OS X complains "The disk you inserted was not readable by this computer" "Initialize Ignore Eject" when it boots, complaining about the Linux drive. Previous free 3rd party apps that worked for earlier versions of OS X do not seem to work at all in Sierra yet - maybe the authors will update their apps when the Gold Master is releaased. You can get used to the complaint and just click eject when you boot OS X or find/create another solution.
Hi, thanks for the info.

My system is already running Ubuntu 16.04 and Windows 10 and now I want to add OSX to the bunch. You stated that you had to installed Ubuntu after OSX. Is there a possibility to keep my installations and just add OSX to the existing installations or do I have to reinstall Ubuntu? Also, when I boot my current system, I actually get the Ubuntu OS loader, where Ubuntu is the default system and only if I scroll down to the Windows Boot manager it actually boots into Windows. Do you think it would be possible to add OSX to the Ubuntu Boot loader at all or do I have to start from scratch?
 
Hi, thanks for the info.

My system is already running Ubuntu 16.04 and Windows 10 and now I want to add OSX to the bunch. You stated that you had to installed Ubuntu after OSX. Is there a possibility to keep my installations and just add OSX to the existing installations or do I have to reinstall Ubuntu? Also, when I boot my current system, I actually get the Ubuntu OS loader, where Ubuntu is the default system and only if I scroll down to the Windows Boot manager it actually boots into Windows. Do you think it would be possible to add OSX to the Ubuntu Boot loader at all or do I have to start from scratch?
Separate or same drive?
If separate drive, install Mac OS on a new, blank drive. Install boot loader of choice (OC recommended if using Mojave, Catalina or Big Sur). Configure config.sys to scan for Windows and Linux. Boot to BIOS/UEFI and make the Mac drive first in BBS boot order. You should be able to select Mac OS, Win10 or Linux to boot them.
 
Separate or same drive?
If separate drive, install Mac OS on a new, blank drive. Install boot loader of choice (OC recommended if using Mojave, Catalina or Big Sur). Configure config.sys to scan for Windows and Linux. Boot to BIOS/UEFI and make the Mac drive first in BBS boot order. You should be able to select Mac OS, Win10 or Linux to boot them.
Thanks!

I have a separate SSD intended purely for OSX, so I follow your guide. Until I found out that my GPU is not supported by Mojave and newer OSs I was trying to configure OC, but since my GPU (nVidia M5000) won't ever be compatible with the new systems, I might as well use Clover and make life easier.

However, if I were to buy an AMD GPU that's compatible with all the recent OSs (Mojave, Catalina and Big Sur), could I install that in my workstation (next to my existing GPU) and hard-wire it to only be used with OSX? The goal would be to have two GPUs, but only use one at any given time, i.e. nVidia for Linux & Windows, and AMD for MacOS.
 
However, if I were to buy an AMD GPU that's compatible with all the recent OSs (Mojave, Catalina and Big Sur), could I install that in my workstation (next to my existing GPU) and hard-wire it to only be used with OSX? The goal would be to have two GPUs, but only use one at any given time, i.e. nVidia for Linux & Windows, and AMD for MacOS.
I have heard of people doing this but never tried it myself. If you are going to purchase another GPU, best to get an AMD GPU that will perform as well as or better than the nVidia quadro card you now have and swap the new for the old. OTOH, there are still nVidia GPUs that are supported - see Dortania listing. You might be able to find one that will be comparable to the M5000, but it is doubtful as Mac support for nVidia GPUs has always been several years out of date, never having the latest GPU by a version or two, e.g. support for K5000, but not for M5000. The M5000 will outperform the K5000 by a good deal.
 
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I have heard of people doing this but never tried it myself. If you are going to purchase another GPU, best to get an AMD GPU that will perform as well as or better than the nVidia quadro card you now have and swap the new for the old. OTOH, there are still nVidia GPUs that are supported - see Dortania listing. You might be able to find one that will be comparable to the M5000, but it is doubtful as Mac support for nVidia GPUs has always been several years out of date, never having the latest GPU by a version or two, e.g. support for K5000, but not for M5000. The M5000 will outperform the K5000 by a good deal.
Thanks.

One last question. My current Mac is running Catalina and I would like to restore my time-machine backup onto the new Hackintosh. However, since it'll be running High-Sierra I have doubts that it'll be able to restore the Catalina backup. Any suggestions or ideas?

FYI the main purpose of the Hackintosh is so that I can run Logic Pro X, because my current mac is simply too old, laggy, and doesn't support my big Logic sessions like it used to anymore. This is evident from the sessions crashing due to "system overload". I certainly hope that all the third-party plugins will be working on the Hackintosh.
 
Thanks.

One last question. My current Mac is running Catalina and I would like to restore my time-machine backup onto the new Hackintosh. However, since it'll be running High-Sierra I have doubts that it'll be able to restore the Catalina backup. Any suggestions or ideas?

FYI the main purpose of the Hackintosh is so that I can run Logic Pro X, because my current mac is simply too old, laggy, and doesn't support my big Logic sessions like it used to anymore. This is evident from the sessions crashing due to "system overload". I certainly hope that all the third-party plugins will be working on the Hackintosh.
As you probably found out, the closest Mac to your hardware is the Late 2013 Mac Pro and Catalina does not support this Mac as it was dropped from support with Mojave. High Sierra runs well on it and Mojave can be made to run with the no_compat_check boot arg.
If your main app is LPX, you do not really need a powerful GPU unless you also game on it and the M5000 is not a very good gaming GPU. Suggest an inexpensive RX570 or RX580.

Best to install High Sierra from scratch if that is the Mac OS version you will be running.
 
I apologize in advance as this question has likely been answered already. I want to be able to launch both Windows 10 and OS X Mojave (10.14.6) from this computer. I've had Mojave running without issue for some time, launching from Clover at startup etc. I recently added a new hard drive and followed the steps outlined at the beginning of this thread for making a Windows 10 drive. I see a Windows 10 drive in the Clover launch window but it takes me to a blinking cursor on a black screen and then nothing. I can launch Windows 10 by selecting F12 at startup and selecting the drive in the menu thereafter.

When I say I followed the instructions at the beginning of the article I mean that I followed them for Windows installation. I did nothing to my OS X driver thereafter.

If this question has been answered previously (I've tried to find an answer but 5 years is a lot of posts to sort through) and someone can point me there I'm happy to try to follow whatever instructions have been previously offered.

Many thanks.
 
Do you have an EFI partition on the Win10 drive? Did you disconnect the Mac OS drive while installing Win10?
Does the icon in Clover have the Win10 drive labeled as Boot Windows EFI from EFI? If not, what is the label on the Win10 icon?
 
Thank you very much for your prompt reply.
Do you have an EFI partition on the Win10 drive?
Yes there is an EFI partition on the Win10 drive. I just mounted it from OS X using Clover Configurator and verified that it has an EFI directory in which are two directories, Boot & Microsoft.
Did you disconnect the Mac OS drive while installing Win10?
I did. I disconnected all other drives while I was installing Win10 as per the recommendation at the beginning of this tutorial.
Does the icon in Clover have the Win10 drive labeled as Boot Windows EFI from EFI? If not, what is the label on the Win10 icon?
The icon in Clover has the Win10 drive labeled as "Boot Microsoft EFI Boot from EFI."

Again, thank you for your help with this. I will try to answer any further questions promptly.
 
Thank you very much for your prompt reply.

Yes there is an EFI partition on the Win10 drive. I just mounted it from OS X using Clover Configurator and verified that it has an EFI directory in which are two directories, Boot & Microsoft.

I did. I disconnected all other drives while I was installing Win10 as per the recommendation at the beginning of this tutorial.

The icon in Clover has the Win10 drive labeled as "Boot Microsoft EFI Boot from EFI."

Again, thank you for your help with this. I will try to answer any further questions promptly.
Have you disabled CSM in BIOS/UEFI?
 
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