Copying EFI, Clover, and USB drives

[outdoormagic]

Short Version:

I have two drives with the exact same EFI folder (and I can boot into Clover from either one), shouldn't I be able to boot into MacOS from either one?

 

More Detail:

I've done a few hacks so far and this never happened. (Gigabyte z370 / 8700k / Vega, Asus z390 / i5-9600k / 1080). Now, I'm setting up a ThinkPad X1 Gen 6. (Yes, I do expect problems on laptops, but that's not the question).

 

Mojave 10.14.4 now boots from the internal SSD. So far, so good. Here's the problem.

 

I installed Mojave on a USB drive (for backup / rescue) and copied the entire EFI partition of my boot drive to the EFI partition on the USB drive. So... I should be able to boot from the USB drive, right? Wrong. Ran Clover installer on the USB itself. Same outcome.

 

With F12, I can boot from the USB into Clover and select the OS on the USB. The boot sequence hangs on End Random Seed, but before the usual '++++++++' line.

So, boot into Clover on internal boot drive, then select OS on USB. Same thing.

 

Read the forums, I saw the posts about AptioMemoryFix, so I tried the various other drivers on the USB. No go.

 

I haven't found the solution yet to the USB boot issue, but what puzzles me is that if I have two drives with the exact same EFI folder (and I can boot into Clover from either one), shouldn't I be able to boot into MacOS from either one?

 

 

Edited April 2, 2019 by outdoormagic

[outdoormagic]

11 hours ago, millusions said:

booting off usb you need to make sure you have USB patches in place. in theory.

 

in practice i found it's a bit random and these days i try to avoid it if i can.

i mean, it worked, but sometimes doesn't.

on further testing i found imac 2013 also has trouble booting from some USB enclosures. it basically refuses to.  sometimes it does, sometimes gets stuck on loading and most times it skips the USB / Start up disk.

which kinda points the finger at the usb enclosures, right?

after that i try to avoid it.

 

instead of Aptiomemory fix try AptiomemoryFix-64

 

Makes sense. I did have AptioMemoryFix-64, indeed, and USB are patches with SSDT. Tried the drive (Samsung flash drive) on another hack and got the interdiction sign. It got further into the boot (with adjusted EFI folder for that second hack), but still failed. Other drives (namely old-school 5400RPM USB 3.0 Seagate drives) work on that second machine. Thanks for sharing your experience.

 

Plan B is to create a small partition, similar to recovery, as alternate boot when updates (OS, kexts, clover) run into trouble.

[outdoormagic]

On 4/3/2019 at 5:16 PM, millusions said:

i also use plan B now.

the partition method works well, but doesn't allow for EFI errors.

 

 

Strange. It doesn't work for me. I assumed it would, but it doesn't.

 

The drive is internal and partitioned as: 1 Windows partition, 2 APFS partitions which show up as 2 Volumes in Disk Utility (not 2 partitions), and all appropriate EFI and Recovery partitions. Mojave installed on both MacOS partitions without any problem. Now, I can boot into Clover, but I only see one of the two Volumes. Tried resetting NVRAM, reinstalling Clover, even formatted the whole drive and started from scratch for both Windows 10 and MacOS. Same outcome: I have one bootable Windows 10 and one bootable Mojave, but I don't see the second Mojave install, even with F3. Tried bless on CoreServices of the "invisible" drive, tried selecting the second drive in Startup Disk (I see both volumes there). Both bless and selecting the disk seem to work, but then I get the same outcome in Clover: the boot partition doesn't show up—only one OS X and one Windows (+recovery, legacy, and all that).

 

Doesn't Clover allow for two OS partitions to be on the same physical drive?

[outdoormagic]

4 hours ago, millusions said:

yea. that's pretty weird hey.

 

from reading your post my initial thought is Clover configurator/gui.

 

if you saw how many Mac OSX installs i have on each computer you'd laugh at me, i just carbon copy and hold on to 5hit too much.

i even have mavericks, i cant even boot it, nvidia web needs 10.10.

anyway, having said that i've never encountered your problem, have a 300GB partition with 'clone' of this system which boots fine

 

have a look at clover/gui and the 'scan' settings.

 

maybe it's APFS thingo, i dont use APFS, have it on a couple of real Macs i dont see any difference to be honest but apple updates force it pretty much, i dont use it on hacks.

plus HPFS i can read from windows with paragon - but if you do that make sure you have [read only] in registry

 

I would agree. Tried various options on Scan. Nothing worked. I did notice 2 other weird things on Clover, though. If I try to exclude/hide volumes, I can, except for "Windows". Nothing happens. Also, if I update Clover, it resets my gui to the holiday theme. That doesn't happen on my other hacks.

 

I had to go APFS as Mojave won't install on anything else. With HS, I could still use the -donotconvert option, but alas no more. But you're right; might be APFS. However, the Clover weirdness mentioned above makes me suspect my Clover install at this point.

 

I guess that means I have to completely de-install clover and completely re-install from scratch.  

 

Stay tuned...

 

 

PS. For reference, here is a thread of others with a similar issue: 

 

Edited April 5, 2019 by outdoormagic
Added info / reference

[outdoormagic]

@millusions, thank you for your help. I got to get all OS X partitions to show by copying apfs.efi to the Clover UEFI 64 Drivers folder. ApfsDriverLoader-64 should have taken care of that, but obviously doesn't fully.

 

As for the USB boot, I think you're right: it depends on the drive. This thumb drive just won't boot (Samsung bar).