Working around EFI/ESP Partition Size limit

[STLVNUB]

Hello All.

One Of The Pitfalls Of The 200MB ESP Is That You Can Only Have One EFI Folder, 

i.e If You Have An EFI Folder, That Is Say 110MB In Size, You Can Only Fit

Another With a Size Limitation Of 90MB.

 

One Way Around This Is To Have A USB Stick Formatted In Fat32,

You Can Have As Many EFI Folders As The Space Permits.

Not Very Practical, Alright For Testing Different configs/Bootloaders

 

Another Way ( The BEST )

Is To Have A Fat 32 Partition On Your Main HD OR Wherever You Boot From

This Way You Can Test As Many configs/Bootloaders As Space Permits

 

I Have Mine As 60GB, On My 1TB NVME Drive, But That Was For Linux, So I Put It To Better Use.

Enjoy 😀

 

 

EDIT:

For Those Daring Individuals:

You Can Have More Than 1 Fat32 Partition

Say You Had 3 OS On 1 HDD, You Could Make 3 Fat32 Partitions With A Different Bootloader/config.plist

Edited July 9, 2022 by STLVNUB

[Guest 5T33Z0]

The title of this post is really misleading. I would change it to something else like "Working around EFI/ESP Partition Size limit"

 

BTW: the ESP Partition in fact is FAT32 already. It's just hidden. Imo, if your EFI folder is about 100 mB in size you are doing something wrong.

Edited July 8, 2022 by 5T33Z0

[STLVNUB]

16 hours ago, 5T33Z0 said:

The title of this post is really misleading. I would change it to something else like "Working around EFI/ESP Partition Size limit"

 

BTW: the ESP Partition in fact is FAT32 already. It's just hidden. Imo, if your EFI folder is about 100 mB in size you are doing something wrong.

The general idea is for testing various bootloaders and save the mounting of ESP

I Did KNOW about the ESP Fat32 and its LIMITATIONS, the whole point of THIS POST

If you have audio and a few GUIs and a heap of kexts the size will be WELL OVER 100MB, POINT OF THIS POST AS WELL.

[Guest 5T33Z0]

• Use mp3 sounds instead of wav files >> size reduction about 10:1
• For OpenCore, you only need 1 file from the Resources folder: the boot chime (OCEFIAudio_VoiceOver_Boot.mp3 ) which is 30 kB in size, unless you need Voice Support in the setuo dialog.
• You don't need more than one theme for testing, do you?
• You can reduce the file size of kexts dramatically for some kexts by compiling your own https://github.com/5T33Z0/OC-Little-Translated/tree/main/J_Compiling_Kexts

 

[Slice]

I have a number of Clover versions in one EFI, number of kexts, number of themes, microsoft and apple folders, reports, and I still have a free space

[makk]

You can create fat32 as local partition and use that instead. Not Hidden. Doesn't have to be EFI partition with Clover or OpenCore.

 

Make the partition any size you wish.  

the bootloader will boot and you have the menu and all.

 

Some tips:

Manual operation before Installing.

 

• Option 1: GPT FAT32 partition for Clover/OpenCore and a separate HFS+J/APFS partition for the OS X.
• Option 2: GPT with a single HFS+J/APFS partition for the OS X (hidden EFI partition automatically created)

 

But lets say that you have already ran with Option 2.

Resize and create FAT32 partition and place the partition in front of the EFI already created. 

how to do this with APFS?

 

Use the Windows Drive.

 

Create the local fat32 partition on the Windows disk. Much easier.

MiniToolPartition Wizard to shrink resize the Windows data partition,

Copy the EFI to your desktop for safe keeping.

Then delete EFI partition of Windows and the Reserve MSR you then have unallocated space. Leave it as is.

Open Minitoolpartition wizard select the Windows partition--highlight it and the right click and select resize/move on the menu

A new window opens where you can resize the partition.

 

Three parts are seen, 

one on top that is empty

the windows data partition in the middle

one on the bottom empty.

to the right are GB open it and select MB for all three. here you don't want Gigabytes. you want Megabytes.

on the windows data--middle of the three-- portion press the tiny down arrow

the bottom empty one begins to fill up

then when you have your size in mind go the top empty one and press the tiny up arrow until all is there.

click ok and then you have to press Apply on the very left bottom of the app.

Then it will ask to restart and boot into another mode to apply the settings.

 

What works better is if you have another Windows drive available then you don't have to restart to apply the settings.

 

Then when it is done boot back into Windows via your bootloader kind of tricky here because Windows is seeking its own EFI

and can throw a loop. So have the handy dandy USB EFI with all the Bootloader configs and folders in it to boot copied from the Original On Disk.

USB boot.

Then when in Windows, open the Minitool and create the EFI. Don't need MSR as it is not really needed. It is like a buffer used for

a purpose that is air.  

Then you can put back the bootloader you have safely copied to your desktop in Windows.

 

It is a bit of a long haul here. But since I have three Windows each on it's own Drive, it is simpler to manipulate, can boot into.

Safety in numbers in most cases.

 

APFS is a new thing which is still not perfect and lacks the versatility which you can find in with third party software, freeware.

Minitoolpartition wizard has a freeware to use and it also has buy ware.  Very good tool and I use it all the time.

Then if you don't already have Explorer++ get that too so you can edit the EFI config.plist using OCAT or Propertree Windows Versions of both.

 

Pretty nifty thing.  Then you can put more files in the EFI or ESP. 

label the new partition to what your bootloader is Opencore or Clover for good measure.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited December 8, 2022 by makk