Can I boot both a Chimera drive and a Clover drive on one computer?

[cfaber]

Gigabyte Z170X Designare Motherboard
Intel i7
GeForce GTX 970

I've got my new build up and running with Sierra. This is a new install and I want to move slowly over time from my other computer. As I transition, I'd like at times to boot into my original boot drive and at other times into the new boot drive on the new computer. The older boot drive on the original computer is running Chimera. The new boot drive in my new build is running Clover.

I can leave each in their own computers and boot them separately at different times, but it would be way more convenient to move the old boot drive to the new build and dual boot them. I made a couple of efforts at this. First, simply plugging in the Chimera drive in the new computer. When Clover came on, it actually had four partitions, two EFIs and two boot drives. I chose the Chimera hard drive and it failed to boot. Strangely, the next time I turned on the machine only the Clover drive and EFI partition were listed. The Chimera drive did not appear. I disconnected, rebooted, etc., and nothing changed this.

2nd Effort

I changing the boot order on startup by pressing F12. This started up the Chimera drive for a few seconds -- I could see the Apple logo -- and then it failed.

Is there a setting I can change inside the UEFI that will make it possible to boot into both at will? Does it have something to do with Legacy mode? I could go in and muck around and experiment, but I'd rather get some guidance.

Thanks in advance for the help!

Chris

 

[vulgo]

Presumably the old disk is is configured to boot on the old machine so it won't work with different hardware? Boot old build with old disk. Update to the same version of OS X as new build and uninstall chameleon. Install old disk to new build. Boot into clover and try booting old disk. Don't duplicate install of clover on the second hard drive.

 

[cfaber]

Thanks cubawire for the response. I'd love to hear more on these ideas. The first thing makes sense, but thinking about the old hardware/new hardware issue, I thought it might be possible to boot while certain things would not work because the drivers/kexts don't apply?

Because it's chimera it's not easy to update from Yosemite (which is what's on there) to Sierra. Could I leave that the way it is and do your other suggestions? I have dual booted two separate flavors of osx in the past on one machine and don't see why that wouldn't work here.

Your other suggestion is basically to make the old drive a bootloader free drive. That's interesting. Are you sure this would work? Does that mean no EFI partition, no kexts, etc. How would I go about removing Chameleon? I have a Carbon Copy cloned drive that I can experiment with. That clone will launch on my old system, so it is the same as the main boot drive.

I've also read elsewhere that "Clover can boot a chameleon drive" I assume what that means is that chameleon can be on the other drive and it will boot from within the clover bootloader? So perhaps the failing boot of the old drive is due to something else?

And wouldn't the problem about the older boot drive not booting the computer because it's configured to boot the other machine still apply even if I used your method?

Thanks!

Chris

 

[cfaber]

So here's an interesting experiment that shows that it's the incompatibility of the old drive with the new computer. I simply gave the old boot priority 1. It goes right into the Cameleon launch screen, skipping clover, starts to launch and then reboots. So I guess the question is: how can I get the older chameleon boot drive to boot the new machine? Is it possible? Let's pretend that there is no clover drive in the new computer, which is essentially the case when I do this.

I should point out that I believe that the UEFI settings on the new computer match the settings on the old computer. No Vt-d, etc., etc. So that also makes me think that it's not UEFI settings but rather the install on the drive that's not compatible. Kexts? Something else?

 

[cfaber]

How about this? Create a second clover drive on the new machine and restore from time machine? Will that work? Would I install Sierra on this other boot drive in the new computer, and then restore? Or Yosemite, restore, update to Sierra?