BeemerBiker Posted July 1, 2015 Share Posted July 1, 2015 Newbie here: I finally got my hackingtosh to boot from the hard drive without any help from a clover USB. I then tried to make a clone of that drive using first CCC 4 then SuperDuper. Neither clone would boot without help from my USB clover boot flash. Using my USB Clover flash to help boot, I then logged in and mounted the EFI partition and noticed that it was missing "boot" and had only "Apple" in the EFI folder. I did not see any of the stuff that I had put into the EFI to make it finally boot from the hard drive. I then deleted the contents of the EFI partition and dragged and dropped my copy of the EFI partition that had worked into it. It still would not boot, but there was now a new problem when I used my USB Clover flash to help boot. It booted but at the critical point where the screen would show the login, it went blank. I then entered my password and hit return and was logged in but there was no display. Since I had installed splashtop streamer, I was able to log in remotely. Anyway, I assume that none of these copy programs do a sector by sector disk clone. SuperDuper in particular didnt copy my EFI partition. This is all new to me, and is an interesting challenge. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Allan Posted July 1, 2015 Share Posted July 1, 2015 Have you formated your EFI partition? Clover only works if EFI is in FAT32. And CCC won't will copy EFI, because this partition is hidden by default. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MacUser2525 Posted July 1, 2015 Share Posted July 1, 2015 Anyway, I assume that none of these copy programs do a sector by sector disk clone. SuperDuper in particular didnt copy my EFI partition. This is all new to me, and is an interesting challenge. Neither program claims to produce sector by sector duplicate of the drive being cloned this is a case of you not understanding the programs you are using. If you want sector by sector duplicate produced then it is time to investigate the dd program built into most if not all *nix operating systems. That said CCC and SD are fine programs that will duplicate the install you have on the partition chosen you just need to be aware of the limitations of what you are using. Oh they will not copy the boot loader that was installed on the original either so if you want the drive to be standalone bootable then you need to install in on target drive before or after cloning only the once in my experience with it/them. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BeemerBiker Posted July 2, 2015 Author Share Posted July 2, 2015 It took 18 hours for dd to finish cloning a 1TB drive. I used 4k blocks and identical drives, but had the same problem as before: would not boot unless I used my clover USB to start it up. I noticed the following: On the "cloned" drives that wont boot properly, "bless --info" provided the expected information. However, on my disk drive that boots properly, "bless --info" generates an error: "Can't access efi-boot-device NVRAM variable". Of course, that variable might be "busy" as I booted from that drive. This is all new to me, especially clover. I examined my config.plist in the EFI partition and it is NOT the same one I put there originally. Something has updated it. I noticed that that some defaults were empty for example DefaultLoader had <string></string> whereas I recall I had put in BOOTX64.efi between the strings. There were other even worse IMHO changes such as RU where it was originally EN in some language setting. I had been using "clover configurator" app for changing config.plist instead of vi. My original config.plist came from googleing a working G41 motherboard post and I suspect that config.plist was created before clover existed. Event if config.plist got corrupted, this system still boots properly into the hard drive without needing an assist from a clover USB unlike the other cloned drives that do NOT have strange items in the config.plist. If I can figure out how to get the drive to boot, then it is possible I can put a script together that can run after CCC or even possibly fix my mac Acronis Rescue Boot which has the same problem as the two non booting CCC4 and DD clones. Unfortunately for the Acronis Rescue Boot drive, it does not have splashtop streamer so even though it booted and is "working" I cannot see anything. I may swap my gtx670 for one of my bitcoin HD5870's and see if the display starts working. It seems ATI is the board to use from looking at a lot of sample config.plist on the internet. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MacUser2525 Posted July 2, 2015 Share Posted July 2, 2015 Nvidia is the way to go with Hackintosh for add in cards really is there no true option enabled under the nvidia in the Graphics section of the config.plist, perhaps post it in code box here so we can look at it. Now I had forgotten about the blessing of drive to be bootable by OS X but you only have to install the Clover once to the clone drive then a CCC clone to it will be bootable on further boots after a cloning, at least that is what does here in my experience with it. Seems like that configurator is doing some strange things to file I would stick with manual edits. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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