Pre-boot usage

[Edhawk]

I have a couple of systems that still use Clover, two Sandy Bridge Legacy Bios HP Microservers, running macOS Catalina. They run headless, one serving files for the family, the other used for macOS Clone storage and TimeMachine. I don't mess around with those systems, they are probably running Clover_r5119 and will continue to do so as they don't need to run Big Sur and work perfectly well as they stand. They still have the Hide Volume entry for 'Preboot' in their config's. I'm unlikely to remove the entry or update Clover.

Every other hack I own, or any I get my hands on, runs with OC and has done since release 0.5.9.

I never liked the Clover releases after Clover_r5119/r5120, as anything newer was a mess trying to incorporate OpenCore. If I wanted to use OpenCore I would choose to switch, not use a bastardised Clover/OC combo bootloader!

I still help people with Clover on their hack's but not as much as I used to, as most people are now trying to switch or use OpenCore from the off.

 

[1Revenger1]

For APFS drives, I'm pretty sure your meant to always boot from preboot (especially if you have filevault enabled)
OpenCore will just implicitly always boot from preboot on APFS.

Never been too sure why it's separate in Clover.

 

[jpz4085]

I never liked the Clover releases after Clover_r5119/r5120, as anything newer was a mess trying to incorporate OpenCore. If I wanted to use OpenCore I would choose to switch, not use a bastardised Clover/OC combo bootloader!

Same here. When they shoehorned OpenCore into Clover that looked to me like a good reason to make the transition. Might as well just use what already works. I always kept the Preboot partition hidden too when I used Clover. That was before Big Sur of course. Now I use OC on both my systems.

Never been too sure why it's separate in Clover.

Probably because Clover has been around since before APFS and the developers continued treating the Preboot and macOS system partitions separately since both worked. Also most Clover users would specify the default boot volume in the plist settings anyway which meant - at least in "legacy Clover" - the Startup Disk preference was temporary. OC is much more like a real Mac in contrast.