Clover El capitan GPT 1 partition mode possible?

[ruthan666]

Hello,
i have installed EL Capitan on Broadwell, but im not able to start it without USB flash, i have tried lots of Clover settings and but without success, i had boot0af:error and now i have blinking cursor on black screen when im trying to boot from GPT HDD.

Problem could be, that i dont have EFI partion on GPT HDD, i needed to restore installation several times (bad kext etc..) and i used from Lion,Yosemite and Maveric, that they dont need EFI partition, if EFI files are on Mac OS partition, so i didnt recover it and i have placed MacOS right at the start disk (i did it also because i want in future copy this partition on bigger SSD, but it doesnt matter now.)

Other thing which confuses me is, when im doing changes in config.plist like boot flags, Mac id change etc, when im booting my installed Mac OS from USB, these settings arent detected, clover boot flags are still same..
What it means, Clover USB ignores MacOS boot flags, or im an Multibeast editing wrong config.plist file?

BTW which is best SW for HFS partition cloning and backuping? I have tried /bough R-Drive, Acronis and Paragon, all have major issues.

 

[cccip]

In order to boot from GPT drive you must have UEFI BIOS and EFI partition with bootloader (Clover) on it.
Older BIOS or UEFI in Legacy boot mode (CSM on) only can use GPT partition to store data, but unable to boot GPT drive.

What you can do (will take you half a day):
- buy & use CCC (Carbon Copy Cloner, it can also work in demo mode)
- boot from your USB stick and backup your drive to external USB disk of appropriate size (if you need it)
- erase partitions & reinstall EL Cap using Clover (this will recreate EFI partition)
- boot new El Cap install and use CCC to transfer entire old partition back (once again if you have important data & apps on it)
- if you require old clover config.plist with all settings - it can be copied off your USB stick to EFI partition

P.S. EFI is a small 100-200Mb FAT partition (sometimes called ESP, should be the first one) that holds a bootloaders under EFI folder

 

[ruthan666]

Thanks for explanation.

I have UEFI bios, and both UEFI and Legacy boot options are enabled, but in F11 boot menu is for my GPT disk everytime only Legacy boot options, for other like MacOS USB install flash or boot cd, i could see also UEFI options.

What i dont know is Carbon Copy - how to boot into without Mac, is there some Bootable media Builder etc or install to be installed on Unibeast Mac USB flash?

Where would be located config.plist on Mac OS or on EFI partition?


I thing that root cause of my problem could be how im creating HFS partition, because in new El capitan disk utility i simply cant/ dont know how to create new partition from unallocated space (i can only erase whole HDD, i dont want because of data partition), im creating new one in Windows through Paragon HDD Suite -HFS - Journaled and later im installing OS on it.

Clover settings - its non such simple as install Clover in UEFI, there are lots of checkboxes, which setting exactly i should to use for GPT UEFI?

For know i want to run Mac OS on GPT disk, later what i should to do for transfer / clone this installation to MBR SSD disk partion?
I suppose that i could do it, without EFI partition with some CLover magic.
For me i enough after that have possiblity to boot SSD installation form Clover USB flash, after that i would use Linux bootloader - grub in MBR.