Clover Boot Loader only (No OS) Question

[lokicat]

Hi All,

I was experimenting with Apple RAID on my Clover install and realize it's a pain to copy the EFI folder to each RAID drive and I assume anytime I want to run Clover config, I have to do that to each drive. Then I came up with an idea.

I have a m.2 slot on my x99 board and an 8 GB m.2 SSD is about $20. Can I just install a bare Clover boot loader to this drive and keep this permanently set as my boot? This would make managing RAID and SuperDuper backups/restore super easy since I never have to worry about reinstalling Clover every time I re-image.

I could also see myself having a couple of these m.2 drives so I can use one as a backup in case I am making risky changes to configuration and/or kexts. I also plan to manage 100% of my custom kexts within Clover.

Anyone see any problems with using Clover this way?

 

[Asus-Freak]

Hi All,

I was experimenting with Apple RAID on my Clover install and realize it's a pain to copy the EFI folder to each RAID drive and I assume anytime I want to run Clover config, I have to do that to each drive. Then I came up with an idea.

I have a m.2 slot on my x99 board and an 8 GB m.2 SSD is about $20. Can I just install a bare Clover boot loader to this drive and keep this permanently set as my boot? This would make managing RAID and SuperDuper backups/restore super easy since I never have to worry about reinstalling Clover every time I re-image.

I could also see myself having a couple of these m.2 drives so I can use one as a backup in case I am making risky changes to configuration and/or kexts. I also plan to manage 100% of my custom kexts within Clover.

Anyone see any problems with using Clover this way?

Just install Clover to the array, there's no reason to have the EFI folder on both drives. Additionally your approach with the m.2 should work fine and is a pretty cool idea...

 

[lokicat]

Just install Clover to the array, there's no reason to have the EFI folder on both drives. Additionally your approach with the m.2 should work fine and is a pretty cool idea...

Thanks, I'll give the direct install to the RAID a try. I'll probably still get a m.2 drive as an EFI backup so I have rollback mechanism if something goes awry with a kext or Clover configurator. I already had a close call when I inadvertently reinstalled my previous apps from Time Machine and completely forgot about HWMonitor. When I installed that on my x99 board, it was kernel panics galore. By sheer luck I had taken screen shots from my iPhone of my Clover configurator screens which had my ROM and MLB values. I was able to reinstall Yosemite fresh and manually key those in so my iMessage kept working. If I had the m.2 drive, I would just reinstall and not worry about it.

I suppose I could do the same with a USB drive, but I have a bad habit of not labelling those and mindless reformatting