PNY 16GB USB installer drives for $3.40

[pastrychef]

I will have a go at installing OpenCore on the USB, set for one of my Haswell systems and see if they all work tomorrow.

Not sure what I will do with the eight USB drives I have in my desk drawer if this does work!

Seeing as how you have multiple hackintoshes, it makes more sense to use Clover for your USB Installer. By using the OEM feature of Clover, you can have individual settings for each of your hacks all in a single EFI.

Please see the bottom of this post for instructions. Look near the bottom of the post for "One Clover USB Installer For All Your Hacks".

 

[trs96]

Seeing as how you have multiple hackintoshes, it makes more sense to use Clover

Edhawk has four Haswell systems all using iMac15,1 as their SMBIOS. It would be possible to use OpenCore or Clover. He could experiment with a generic iMac 15,1 OC EFI folder and see what works on all four systems.

You can also keep a few different EFI folders in the EFI partition of the drive. Name each one separately to know which system they work for. Then rename the one you want to boot to the installer on "EFI" before booting and it should work with no problems.

So, one EFI might be called "Z97X-UD5H" another one "UD5H-BK." Another one "Gaming 7" and finally "Z87X-D3H."

 

[pastrychef]

Edhawk has four Haswell systems all using iMac15,1 as their SMBIOS. It would be possible to use OpenCore or Clover. He could experiment with a generic iMac 15,1 OC EFI folder and see what works on all four systems.

You can also keep a few different EFI folders in the EFI partition of the drive. Name each one separately to know which system they work for. Then rename the one you want to boot to the installer on "EFI" before booting and it should work with no problems.

So, one EFI might be called "Z97X-UD5H" another one "UD5H-BK." Another one "Gaming 7" and finally "Z87X-D3H."

It would definitely be possible to create a single generic EFI for all the Haswell systems. This would work for either Clover or OpenCore.

However, if he wants to maintain the aspects that make each system individualized, using Clover's OEM feature will allow each system to boot with their own Serial, Board Serial, UUID. This way, everything such as App Store, Messages, etc will work correctly once booted. Also, USB port mapping can be correct for each system.

It's also possible to create a generic config.plist and collection of kexts that would work for most systems and still have the OEM folders for the individual systems he already has.

 

[Edhawk]

I installed Catalina from the multi-OS USB, it worked as normal.

I used the OC folder from my iMac1 system to install Catalina to a spare SSD. The OC GUI shows all eight OS's are available, the older four OS's (mavericks to Sierra) show as yellow icon external drives, the other four (High Sierra to Big Sur) show with their respective circular OS icon.

Storing different OC folders in the EFI partition looks to be the best option, if this is to work for more than one CPU-series/system.

Just for clarification I presently have eleven (11) hack's, I only added the four in my signature as they are the ones that have options I can select in the build profiles, and even they are not correct. My RX 580's are both PowerColor Red Devil dGPU's but they aren't an option in the build profile.

• Three are HP Servers (2 x Mojave/Clover and 1 x Catalina/OC),
• 1 x HP & 1 x Dell Laptops (running Catalina and High Sierra respectively both with Clover bootloader),
• an old HP Server (AMD Turion) running Snow Leopard/Chameleon bootloader (I can run Yosemite/Clover on this but it doesn't work as well as Snow) and
• an FX8350 AMD system running Catalina with OC.

I have lost count of the number I created and gave away, or on a rare occasion sold.

 

[pastrychef]

Storing different OC folders in the EFI partition looks to be the best option, if this is to work for more than one CPU-series/system.

Try the Clover OEM feature. You'll love it.

Here's my USB Installer's OEM folder. Each of the listed systems boot with their individual USB ports fix, Serial, Board Serial, UUID, etc. Once booted in to macOS, each of those systems are good to go with everything working. Notice that the systems range from laptops to Skylake to Coffee Lake desktops.

 

[Edhawk]

Definitely worth looking in to in more detail, as I have a number of systems that still use clover. These range from Sandy Bridge (HP Microservers) to Kaby Lake (which is strictly hands off, as this is my wife's laptop and she hates me changing or updating anything).

I always wondered why the OEM folder was present in the CLOVER folder. This explains what it can and should be used for perfectly.

 

[JBX]

If I may... just to understand I want to use 1 thumb drive for Catalina and Big Sur.

Create partitions on thumb drive.
Run create install media for each OS to a each partition (dose this create different EFI partitions?)
Place OpenCore on which EFI? I am using iMac19,1 to boot/install both Catalina and Big Sur.

Thanks

 

[pastrychef]

If I may... just to understand I want to use 1 thumb drive for Catalina and Big Sur.

Create partitions on thumb drive.
Run create install media for each OS to a each partition (dose this create different EFI partitions?)
Place OpenCore on which EFI? I can using iMac19,1 to boot/install both Catalina and Big Sur.

Thanks

There will only be one EFI partition on your USB flash drive. That's the one you want to put your EFI folder.

 

[JBX]

Will try it soon. Thanks

 

[JBX]

Well I created 2 partitions on 32GB Thumb drive and created install media for Catalina and Big Sur then put my OC EFI folder on the EFI partition. I restarted, cleared NVRAM and did F12 to select it to boot from. I know the EFI is working because I used OC 0.6.9 and not 070beta which is on my main boot drive. Unfortunately, in the boot menu the installers do not show up.