donkey Posted August 28, 2009 Share Posted August 28, 2009 Hello everyone. I searched for this topic and I didn't find much info. Is there a way to setup a GUID partition w.out having the 200mb EFI partition? It looks like it is created automatically. I can trick windows 7 installer's system partition into a regular partition but that creates a MBR instead of GUID. Or is there a way to created a GUID partition via windows install CD? Thanks for your input! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
srs5694 Posted August 29, 2009 Share Posted August 29, 2009 The EFI System Partition (ESP) is required to boot a computer with GPT partitions on a system with EFI rather than a legacy BIOS. (At least officially; I don't know if there are any workarounds on EFI-based systems.) On a BIOS-based system that uses GPT, the ESP is not required. I don't know about Apple's utilities, but lots of tools will create a disk without an ESP -- GNU Parted and my own GPT fdisk are two I know about. That said, installing without an ESP might be a bit short-sighted, since it might be required in the future. I know of at least one boot loader (for NetBSD) that uses the ESP to store its files. Thus, I recommend you simply leave the ESP in place, at least for boot disks. It's not like the 100-200MB it consumes will be a great hardship on a modern hard disk with a capacity measured in the hundreds of gigabytes. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
donkey Posted September 16, 2009 Author Share Posted September 16, 2009 Thanks again Rod! I didn't notice that you replied. Appreciate the response to both posts Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts