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200MB EFI Partition


donkey
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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!

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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.

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