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barrykn / big-sur-micropatcher

A primitive USB patcher for installing macOS Big Sur on unsupported Macs
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EFI Boot to create NVRAM as Mac Partition #117

Open jersocOD opened 3 years ago

jersocOD commented 3 years ago

I want to make a small partition on an external hard drive for the EFI partition that appeared when connecting the usb (with the mac os installer). Do I need to create it on a usb using Mac OS Extended (Journaled) format with GUID schema? I just want to have the NVRAM configurator on the partition just in case if something goes wrong, but I don't want to depend on a usb. Note: I am currently using that hard drive with NTFS format to back up a Windows PC and Time Machine for this Mac.

barrykn commented 3 years ago

If the external hard drive has a GUID Partition Table, then it should have an EFI partition of its own, which could be used for this purpose (although I don't have time right this moment to write directions on how to do that, and I don't think the install-setvars.sh script in its current form is suited to the task either). (I need to look at the install-setvars.sh source again, but it might not be too hard to add an extra command line option for doing something like this.)

Otherwise, it would actually be best to create a small FAT partition (FAT16 and FAT32 both work). Just copy the "EFI" folder inside the "setvars" folder (that comes with the patcher) onto that partition, and that's it, it will show up as "EFI Boot" in the Startup Selector (the option-key boot menu).

There's an alternate, more complicated way of doing it on an HFS+ partition, that would also allow for changing the name from "EFI Boot" to something else. I could write instructions or a script for it at some point. (Maybe I'll add it to the README for v0.5.3.)

jersocOD commented 3 years ago

Thanks @barrykn for responding. I have tried that workaround and it works like a charm.