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#300
many thanks. excellent tutorial!!
many thanks. excellent tutorial!!
The UEFI specification does not require a UEFI computer to boot from NTFS. The specification only requires the computer to boot from a FAT file system. Therefore, relatively few UEFI computers will boot from NTFS.
http://www.uefi.org/sites/default/fi...I_Spec_2_7.pdf
Printed page 593, electronic file page 663 and also printed page 597, electronic file page 667.
I just did. Motherboard is an Asus Crossblade Ranger. USB drive MBR partitioning one partition marked as active. When the partition is FAT32 the computer will boot it in both UEFI and CSM modes. When the partition is NTFS, it will boot in CSM mode, but booting it UEFI mode drops me back into UEFI setup. Behavior which is absolutely consistent with the UEFI specification.
Bottom line is if you want compatibility with all computers meeting the UEFI specification, the boot partition needs to be FAT12, FAT16, or FAT32. Other UEFI computers may boot different filesystems, but they are not required to by UEFI specification.
And again:
GitHub - pbatard/uefi-ntfs: UEFI:NTFS - Boot NTFS partitions from UEFIUEFI:NTFS - Boot NTFS partitions from UEFI
UEFI:NTFS is a generic bootloader, that is designed to allow boot from an NTFS partition, in pure UEFI mode, even if your system does not natively support it. This is primarily intended for use with Rufus, but can also be used independently.
In other words, UEFI:NTFS is designed to remove the restriction, which most UEFI systems have, of only providing boot support from a FAT32 partition, and enable the ability to also boot from NTFS partitions.
This can be used, for instance, to UEFI-boot a Windows NTFS installation media, containing an install.wim that is larger than 4 GB (something FAT32 cannot support) or to allow dual BIOS + UEFI boot of 'Windows To Go' drives.
As an aside, and because there appears to exist a lot of innacurate information about this on the Internet, it needs to be stressed out that there is absolutely nothing in the UEFI specifications that actually forces the use of FAT32 for UEFI boot. On the contrary, UEFI will happily boot from ANY file system, as long as your firmware has a driver for it. As such, it is only the choice of system manufacturers, who tend to only include a driver for FAT32, that limits the default boot capabilities of UEFI, and that leads many to erroneously believe that only FAT32 can be used for UEFI boot.
However, as demonstrated in this project, it is very much possible to work around this limitation and enable any UEFI firmware to boot from non-FAT32 filesystems.
I hope motherboard manufacturers will use the demonstrated workaround, so that the "4GB install.wim" limit will disappear.