Guide: Multibooting UEFI on Separate Drives

[Going Bald]

hi there, i'm new here,.
i hope you can guide me,
i have pc installed win 10 in SSD, and i want to install sierra on new SSD, but i don't want to reinstall windows partition,
what should i do?

See post #1

First step is determine if Windows is installed UEFI or Legacy BIOS mode.
Click Start->Run, type msinfo32, hit enter.
Resulting screen will show you BIOS Mode.
If UEFI, install Clover UEFI mode. If Legacy, install Clover Legacy mode.

 

[CyrusHD]

I've been trying to get my Windows 10 drive to boot from Clover for about a 3 days now. So far, nothing has worked. I have Sierra and Windows 10 installed on separate SSDs. I believe they are both gpt/uefi. I've tried adding boot entries in the configurator and that failed (miserably), I've tried using cmd to add efi files and then adding the Microsoft and boot.efi to my Sierra efi partition, didn't work. Just keeps either giving no signal, taking me to the blue repair screen and then, again no signal. Stressing me out majorly now. I'd appreciate anything at all at this rate, cheers!

 

[Going Bald]

I've been trying to get my Windows 10 drive to boot from Clover for about a 3 days now. So far, nothing has worked. I have Sierra and Windows 10 installed on separate SSDs. I believe they are both gpt/uefi. I've tried adding boot entries in the configurator and that failed (miserably), I've tried using cmd to add efi files and then adding the Microsoft and boot.efi to my Sierra efi partition, didn't work. Just keeps either giving no signal, taking me to the blue repair screen and then, again no signal. Stressing me out majorly now. I'd appreciate anything at all at this rate, cheers!

Confirm UEFI installation of Windows - run msinfo32.exe

 

[CyrusHD]

Says it's uefi

 

[Going Bald]

Says it's uefi

Did you do this?
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.

Alternatively, you can hit shift+F10 at the first installation screen and use diskpart to clean the drive, convert GPT and create a partition name EFI format FS=FAT32 size 200MB (or larger) before you exit dsikpart and then run the installer. If an EFI partition is already present the installer uses it rather than creating another one.

Clover wants the EFI partition to be the first partition on the drive, not buried behind the recovery/reserved partitions as the independent Windows installer installs it if allowed to create it automatically.

 

[CyrusHD]

Did you do this?
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.

Alternatively, you can hit shift+F10 at the first installation screen and use diskpart to clean the drive, convert GPT and create a partition name EFI format FS=FAT32 size 200MB (or larger) before you exit dsikpart and then run the installer. If an EFI partition is already present the installer uses it rather than creating another one.

Clover wants the EFI partition to be the first partition on the drive, not buried behind the recovery/reserved partitions as the independent Windows installer installs it if allowed to create it automatically.

Will clean not delete everything though?

 

[Farodo]

Thanks so much for this guide, it helped me to achieve dualbooting my system from Clover.

I use a SM961 for Windows and as I don't understand good enough the guide how to get OS X to recognise the NVMe Drive, I needed to format the drive with diskpart.
(Sierra is already installed on a 850 Pro SATA SSD and I disconnected it for this installation)

Put the Stick with Windows 10 UEFI Installer in, run the installation and opened diskpart to format the SM961.
I did that exactly just like I would in DiskUtility:
Created a partition on the SM961 drive and formated it to MacOS Extended (journaled) using the command (format fs=JHFS+).
Diskpart said something like: completed to 0% and filesystem is not compatible (makes sense, since it is thought to be for OS X, but 0%?). And my partition's size was not 119GB, like I set it to be, but only 116GB.
Why? I don't know but ignored both things and proceeded. If someone has more knowledge about this, please let me know!
I quit the command prompt and started the custom installation.
Deleted the partition, like advised in the guide and installed windows on the now free space.

When I reconnected my OSX Disk Clover showed me many options:

Boot Windows from Legacy HD2 --> not good option, right?
Boot Windows from Legacy HD3 --> don't know exactly where HD3 comes from but as legacy: not right option
Boot Windows from EFI --> I thought this was the option to successfully boot windows - it wasn't
<MacOS Booting Options>
Boot Microsoft from EFI --> this is the option that works for me to Boot into windows

SO I think there are still some mysteries to solve for me and cosmetic adjustments to make (too many booting options and 3GB of "lost" disk space, right?) but I can successfully boot Windows 10 and Sierra using Clover and that is a major success for me (always have to remember this is my first Hackintosh built).

My Questions for Going Bald:
Did I miss some steps, or misunderstood something important? Because you wrote something about cleaning disk and converting GPT.
Additionally you suggested creating a partition with FAT32 as filesystem in your latest post here.

 

[Going Bald]

Will clean not delete everything though?

Yes, but formatting the drive in OS X Disk Utility will also wipe it out, so if you have data on the drive you want to keep then back it up or use a new drive.

 

[Going Bald]

My Questions for Going Bald:
Did I miss some steps, or misunderstood something important? Because you wrote something about cleaning disk and converting GPT. Additionally you suggested creating a partition with FAT32 as filesystem in your latest post here.

Misunderstood directions.
This is incorrect procedure:

I did that exactly just like I would in DiskUtility:
Created a partition on the SM961 drive and formated it to MacOS Extended (journaled) using the command (format fs=JHFS+).
Diskpart said something like: completed to 0% and filesystem is not compatible (makes sense, since it is thought to be for OS X, but 0%?). And my partition's size was not 119GB, like I set it to be, but only 116GB.
Why? I don't know but ignored both things and proceeded.

Either use OS X disk utility to format the drive or use diskpart from the elevated command prompt.
If using Mac OS DU, select the drive in the left pane, select 1 partition in the right pane, name it format it Mac OS Extended (Journaled). This gets you a drive GPT+ formatted with a 200MB EFI partition at the start of the drive space.

If using diskpart, clean the drive, convert it to GPT format, create an EFI partition 200MB or larger, format it FAT32 and exit, leaving the major portion of the drive as GPT formatted free space. You then install Win10 on the free space. Windows 10 will create all partitions it needs.

 

[Farodo]

Misunderstood directions.
This is incorrect procedure:


Either use OS X disk utility to format the drive or use diskpart from the elevated command prompt.
If using Mac OS DU, select the drive in the left pane, select 1 partition in the right pane, name it format it Mac OS Extended (Journaled). This gets you a drive GPT+ formatted with a 200MB EFI partition at the start of the drive space.

If using diskpart, clean the drive, convert it to GPT format, create an EFI partition 200MB or larger, format it FAT32 and exit, leaving the major portion ofd the drive as GPT formatted free space. You then install Win10 on the free space. Windows 10 will create all partitions it needs.

Of course I did only use one of the two programs to partition the drive. I'm sorry if I described my approach unclear.
DU is not an option as it doesn't recognize my SM961 (NMVe drive needs special kexts, which I didn't 'install' yet)

In diskpart: I don't know exactly how to convert a drive to GPT format nor to create an EFI partition.
Are there special command for this? I just learned the basics, like creating new partition (with chosen size) and setting the filesystem for it.
Iwould really appreciate if you could write down the commands in diskpart for the steps you mentioned. Always exciting to learn more