TODO: some way of creating a separate windows Recovery, I cannot find any guide on how to do that so that Windows would recognize it natively, if you know of a guide or know how to do it, open a PR (opens new window)or an issue (opens new window)with your ideas.
Quick suggestion on how to create "Windows Recovery Partition" and get it recognized by Windows Installer
In diskpart.exe, the following commands will work.
create partition primary size=1024
format fs=ntfs quick label=Recovery
set id=de94bba4-06d1-4d40-a16a-bfd50179d6ac
GPT ATTRIBUTES=0x8000000000000001
Explaination
Creating the partition
First, create a primary partition and format it as NTFS.
You may adjust 'size' and 'label' parameter to meet your need.
Recommended minimal size is 1024MiB.
Real Windows-installer-created recovery partition have label 'WinRE Tools'
About the recommended size
Windows Installer by default creates recovery partition of size 350MiB(Win8) and 450MiB(Win10), which is just enough to put recovery image.
However, upon Windows update (e.g. From 1909 to 2004), this partition is not big enough to put new recovery images and Windows will shrink system partition (Drive C) and create a new recovery partition with size of approximately 900+MiB.
After Windows upgrade, you will ends up having two recovery partitions: One is empty 450MiB old one and the other one is 900+MiB new one.
To avoid this, I recommend that you create this partition with 1024MiB size (or maybe 1536MiB or more).
About GPT Partition Attributes
This is a 64 bit (16 digit hex value) field for different flags.
According to Microsoft, the preferable, 'user-friendly' way to modify this, is through the "attributes" command within diskpart.exe because you may use "Flag Name" which is very self-explaining so you may know what attribute you're setting and clearing.
The 'attributes' command can set the following flags:
FlagName
Value
Hidden
0x4000 0000 0000 0000
READONLY
0x1000 0000 0000 0000
NODEFAULTDRIVELETTER
0x8000 0000 0000 0000
SHADOWCOPY
0x2000 0000 0000 0000
We need flag 0x8000 0000 0000 0000 and flag 0x0000 0000 0000 0001.
But from the table, we don't see any flag with value 0x0000 0000 0000 0001.
So, we must use gpt attributes command to achieve this.
Other knowledge to share
Manually Windows recovery partition modification
Windows have a built-in command line tool named ReAgentc.exe.
Years ago, I used to manually create Recovery partition and use this program to tell Windows to use that partition as Recovery partition.
So, actually, it's not mandatory to create recovery partition before Windows installation if you want a standalone recovery partition.
# This command can lookup current configuration
ReAgentc.exe /info
# This command can set R drive as Recovery partition
ReAgentc.exe /SetReImage /path R:\Recovery\WindowsRE
Microsoft default partition layout and Apple's incompatibility with it
By default, on a blank disk, Windows installer creates partition in the following order:
Size
Partition
450MiB
Recovery partition
99MiB
EFI partition
16MiB
MSR partition
Remaining
Windows partition
I don't know why Microsoft places EFI partition after Recovery partition.
And I don't know why Apple thinks 'This GPT disk does not have EFI partition' if EFI partition is not the first partition.
While I was using Disk Utility app of macOS to operate on a disk with above partition layout, I encountered an error saying something about insufficient space. The actual cause was Apple tries to create 200M EFI partition before the first partition.
My partition layout habit/preference
Offset
Size
Partition
1MiB
2543MiB
EFI partition
2544MiB
16MiB
MSR partition
2.5GiB
1024MiB
Recovery partition
3.5GiB
Remaining
All other partitions for one or more operating systems
The reason I'm using 2543MiB EFI partition:
'2.5GiB' minus '16MiB MSR partition' minus '1MiB Offset for Partition table' = 2543MiB
I have 1GB WinPE.wim in my EFI partition which is handy for some repair job.
My hackintosh partition layout
I got Lenovo K29 laptop with 250GB mSATA SSD + 500GB SATA HDD and I configured FusionDrive.
Here's my layout:
Offset
Size
macOS DeviceName
Partition
1MiB
2047MiB
disk0s1
EFI partition
2.0GiB
120GiB
disk0s2
APFS container
122GiB
100GiB
disk0s3
Windows
222GiB
16GiB
disk0s4
EXT4 Ubuntu
20KiB
200MiB
disk1s1
EFI partition (Apple created)
200MiB20KiB
186.2GiB
disk1s2
APFS container
186.4GiB
279.3GiB
disk1s3
HFS+ TimeMachine Partition
465.7GiB
128MiB
disk1s4
Apple Boot partition (Apple created)
APFS Fusion Drive will be disk2 upon boot and it uses disk0s2 and disk1s2.
This demonstrates:
It's possible to use multiple manually created APFS container form one big APFS FusionDrive.
It's possible to have 'boot camp' windows drive on the SSD for a FusionDrive configuration. (Apple's BootCamp Assistant is just too lazy/ not willing to support this)
This layout can fully utilize the design of 'EFI Spec': /EFI/<vendor>. In this case 'vendor' is 'Apple', 'Microsoft', 'OC', 'ubuntu'.
In OC's UEFI shell, or under Windows/macOS/ubuntu, I can delete BOOTx64.efi and copy any other efi file as BOOTx64.efi.
Finally
I'm not so good at Markdown writing. Sorry for the formatting.
Also, I'm sorry because I feel that I'm a little off topic for the latter part of the issue.
Guide in question
Link to page with the issue
https://dortania.github.io/OpenCore-Multiboot/QUICK.html
Quick suggestion on how to create "Windows Recovery Partition" and get it recognized by Windows Installer
In diskpart.exe, the following commands will work.
Explaination
Creating the partition
First, create a primary partition and format it as NTFS. You may adjust 'size' and 'label' parameter to meet your need. Recommended minimal size is 1024MiB. Real Windows-installer-created recovery partition have label 'WinRE Tools'
About the recommended size
Windows Installer by default creates recovery partition of size 350MiB(Win8) and 450MiB(Win10), which is just enough to put recovery image. However, upon Windows update (e.g. From 1909 to 2004), this partition is not big enough to put new recovery images and Windows will shrink system partition (Drive C) and create a new recovery partition with size of approximately 900+MiB. After Windows upgrade, you will ends up having two recovery partitions: One is empty 450MiB old one and the other one is 900+MiB new one. To avoid this, I recommend that you create this partition with 1024MiB size (or maybe 1536MiB or more).
About GPT Partition Attributes
This is a 64 bit (16 digit hex value) field for different flags. According to Microsoft, the preferable, 'user-friendly' way to modify this, is through the "attributes" command within diskpart.exe because you may use "Flag Name" which is very self-explaining so you may know what attribute you're setting and clearing. The 'attributes' command can set the following flags:
Hidden0x4000 0000 0000 0000READONLY0x1000 0000 0000 0000NODEFAULTDRIVELETTER0x8000 0000 0000 0000SHADOWCOPY0x2000 0000 0000 0000We need flag
0x8000 0000 0000 0000and flag0x0000 0000 0000 0001. But from the table, we don't see any flag with value0x0000 0000 0000 0001. So, we must usegpt attributescommand to achieve this.Other knowledge to share
Manually Windows recovery partition modification
Windows have a built-in command line tool named
ReAgentc.exe. Years ago, I used to manually create Recovery partition and use this program to tell Windows to use that partition as Recovery partition. So, actually, it's not mandatory to create recovery partition before Windows installation if you want a standalone recovery partition.Microsoft default partition layout and Apple's incompatibility with it
By default, on a blank disk, Windows installer creates partition in the following order:
I don't know why Microsoft places EFI partition after Recovery partition. And I don't know why Apple thinks 'This GPT disk does not have EFI partition' if EFI partition is not the first partition.
While I was using Disk Utility app of macOS to operate on a disk with above partition layout, I encountered an error saying something about insufficient space. The actual cause was Apple tries to create 200M EFI partition before the first partition.
My partition layout habit/preference
The reason I'm using 2543MiB EFI partition:
My hackintosh partition layout
I got Lenovo K29 laptop with 250GB mSATA SSD + 500GB SATA HDD and I configured FusionDrive. Here's my layout:
APFS Fusion Drive will be disk2 upon boot and it uses disk0s2 and disk1s2. This demonstrates:
My EFI partition file layout
This layout can fully utilize the design of 'EFI Spec':
/EFI/<vendor>. In this case 'vendor' is 'Apple', 'Microsoft', 'OC', 'ubuntu'. In OC's UEFI shell, or under Windows/macOS/ubuntu, I can delete BOOTx64.efi and copy any other efi file as BOOTx64.efi.Finally
I'm not so good at Markdown writing. Sorry for the formatting. Also, I'm sorry because I feel that I'm a little off topic for the latter part of the issue.