Talk:EFI system partition

Needs extensive updating
As with any technology, the information on this has changed rapidly. Would someone volunteer to update various sections, especially the GRUB2/Linux discussion. Thanks MxBuck (talk) 22:12, 4 February 2018 (UTC)

No ill effects?
"On Apple's Intel-based Macintosh computers, the EFI partition can be deleted without ill effect"

The system wll boot, but "without ill effects" is wrong. This is used as a location to place executables for the EFI system to perform firmware updates. See http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2434?viewlocale=en_US and http://www.rickycampbell.com/the-intel-mac-partitioning-system-efi-and-gpt/ —Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.130.118.75 (talk • contribs) 20:37, 12 April 2009
 * Verified and applied. the www.rickycampbell.com link has gone dead, so didn't include that. Hungry Charlie (talk) 21:02, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Filesystem?
Which file-system should the partition be formatted to (FAT, UFS, EXT)?

Stlman (talk) 22:38, 22 November 2011 (UTC)


 * FAT. --Matthiaspaul (talk) 18:45, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

"Windows XP 64-bit edition" refers to Windows for IA64, not x86-64
Quote from the article: "On Windows XP 64-Bit Edition and later, access to the EFI System partition is obtained by running the mountvol /s command."

This is actually pretty obscure information and not interesting in general, instead misleading. "64-bit Edition" refers to Windows for the IA64 architecture. This command will do nothing on x86-64 architecture Windows. Executing "mountvol /?" still confusingly shows the "/s" command, but the full documentation is clear: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc772586.aspx

Quote: "Mounts the EFI system partition on the specified drive. Available on Itanium-based computers only."

To obtain access to this partition on x86-64 Windows, it can be assigned a drive letter in the Windows "diskpart" command line tool. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.239.72.139 (talk) 09:24, 23 October 2013 (UTC)


 * Hello there! Please be welcome to edit the article, providing appropriate references at the same time.  Thank you. -- Dsimic (talk) 12:55, 23 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Done. ~ FullScale4Me (talk) 22:48, 5 May 2024 (UTC)

Sense of paragraph appears to be backward
"Despite the fact that the UEFI specification requires MBR partition tables to be fully supported,[3] some UEFI firmware implementations immediately switch to the BIOS-based CSM booting upon detecting certain types of partition table on the boot disk, effectively preventing UEFI booting to be performed from EFI System partitions contained on MBR-partitioned disks.[4]"

The wording should likely mean that if both an MBR and EFI System partition exist on disk, the EFI System partition should be preferred, and in (broken) some cases, it isn't. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Bob Collins (talk • contribs) 02:25, 25 September 2015 (UTC)


 * Thank you for pointing in out, got the wording so it's more clear. &mdash; Dsimic (talk &#124; contribs) 12:14, 25 September 2015 (UTC)

"Why?" question not addressed
I just read this article, but nowhere does it address the question of why EFI system partitions are any better than boot sectors. In other words, why the change of boot paradigm? – void  xor  02:33, 28 December 2015 (UTC)


 * you cannot put a kernel into an MBR, so ESP is better. yy 16:30, 9 November 2018 (UTC)  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Yy22yy (talk • contribs)
 * Actually a kernel can be a PE bootloader for UEFI. No even FAT partition needed. 109.252.90.54 (talk) 15:09, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

really wtf?
booting used to be: very easy, 4 partitions, each OS gets exactly ONE partition, 4 OSes per drive (which btw for TB drives still is usable as a number, 4)

GPT UEFI have simply complicated everything and made booting more complex while not offering end users ANYTHING useful. I made a GPT drive (forced to by one OS). I tried to install a 2nd OS it complains the first OS has already made an EFI and refuses to install further.

I don't see any damn improvement, personally. Just more obstructions to deal with.

Discuss ESP Structure?
Lots of helpful info here,

But one thing not discussed is the actual structure of the ESP partition. Where are drivers stored? Bootloaders? How does UEFI traverse the ESP?

That is the kind of info I don't know, and was hoping to find here. Next stop is the UEFI specification, but perhaps someone with better expertise than me should fill in these details, at least in broad brush-strokes? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 104.232.123.245 (talk) 09:39, 4 October 2021 (UTC)