<< Solved >> Hackintosh Clone won't Boot

[GroundedCopilot]

Hi Team, from the outset I am a novice so be gentle with me. I create what I though was a bootable clone USB3 external harddrive of my Hackintosh. I wanted to test my clone before I update to Catalina. However, when I unplugged my Hackintosh SDD and plugged in my USB 3 cloned drive and turned on my desktop it would load to my BIOS settings. What the hell am I doing wrong.

 

[pastrychef]

Hi Team, from the outset I am a novice so be gentle with me. I create what I though was a bootable clone USB3 external harddrive of my Hackintosh. I wanted to test my clone before I update to Catalina. However, when I unplugged my Hackintosh SDD and plugged in my USB 3 cloned drive and turned on my desktop it would load to my BIOS settings. What the hell am I doing wrong.View attachment 429989

Mount the EFI partition from your main system drive.
Mount the EFI partition from your USB drive.
Copy the entire EFI folder from the main system drive's EFI partition to the USB drive's EFI partition.

 

[GroundedCopilot]

@pastrychef I have followed your instructions and I have had success in it loading past the BIOS settings. Main SDD is disconnected and the USB3 clone drive is connected. From the Clover Boot Manager screen how do I load from my USB3 clone to test that my Hackintosh clone is working.

 

[pastrychef]

@pastrychef I have followed your instructions and I have had success in it loading past the BIOS settings. Main SDD is disconnected and the USB3 clone drive is connected. From the Clover Boot Manager screen how do I load from my USB3 clone to test that my Hackintosh clone is working.

Make sure your clone is formatted correctly.

 

[GroundedCopilot]

@pastrychef I have used super duper to reclone my USB3 to ensure that it is formatted correctly and then:

Mounted the EFI partition from your main system drive.
Mounted the EFI partition from your USB drive.
Copy the entire EFI folder from the main system drive's EFI partition to the USB drive's EFI partition.

Still for the life of me when I reboot off the clone the USB3 with the clone doesn't appear on the Clover Bootloader. Any additional help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[pastrychef]

@pastrychef I have used super duper to reclone my USB3 to ensure that it is formatted correctly and then:

Mounted the EFI partition from your main system drive.
Mounted the EFI partition from your USB drive.
Copy the entire EFI folder from the main system drive's EFI partition to the USB drive's EFI partition.

Still for the life of me when I reboot off the clone the USB3 with the clone doesn't appear on the Clover Bootloader. Any additional help would be greatly appreciated.

Please update your profile to include your CPU, motherboard, and GPU.

I don't know why it isn't working for you. Once you copy the EFI folder over, it's exactly the same as booting from your USB flash drive.

 

[AppleByte]

Build with: [Args: -mc --no-usb -D NO_GRUB_DRIVERS_EMBEDDED -t XCODE8 | -D DISABLE_USB_SUPPORT -D NO_GRUB_DRIVERS_EMBEDDED

Maybe, the way Clover was built, not to support running from USB connected drive, but can recognized the installation app. I am not sure and never tried before.

 

[GroundedCopilot]

Hi Team, thank you for all you help. It was a user error (I was to blame). I thought that I have formatted the USB3 clone correctly but I hadn't. Once I formatted the USB 3 clone in APFS and followed @pastrychef instructions:
-Mounted the EFI partition from your main system drive.
-Mounted the EFI partition from your USB drive.
-Copy the entire EFI folder from the main system drive's EFI partition to the USB drive's EFI partition.
It works. Thank again for all your help.