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Trying to install rEFind on Mac OS using this instruction: or manually. Have following error:

Installing rEFInd on OS X....
Warning: root device doesn't have an EFI partition
Could not find an EFI partition. Aborting!

Seems I removed this partition accidentally when resizing & moving mac and windows partitions with PartedMagic:

$ diskutil list
/dev/disk0 (internal, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *1.0 TB     disk0
   1:                  Apple_HFS Macintosh HD            476.1 GB   disk0s1
   2:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.1 MB   disk0s2
   3:       Microsoft Basic Data BOOTCAMP                523.2 GB   disk0s3

How to correctly restore such partition so GUID and MBR still work correctly an successfully install rEFind then? Or there are other installing options?

Rod Smith
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Aleksey K
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2 Answers2

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Clearly your EFI Partition is missing this might help you https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/58892/182302

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Ahmed K.
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  • There was some easier way: https://discussions.apple.com/message/30948545#30948545 but it does not work: "Error: -69766: The partition map needs to be repaired because there's a problem with the EFI system partition's file system" – Aleksey K Mar 06 '17 at 22:35
  • Seems operations should be done on unmounted disk0, however I can't do that: need to boot from some external disk. MacBook 2011 does not allow to boot from flash. – Aleksey K Mar 06 '17 at 23:13
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    @AlekseyK Your 2011 MacBook can boot from a USB flash drive, as long as the USB flash drive is using GPT. Most USB flash drives come from the factory as MBR with one big FAT32 or exFAT partition, so you have to reformat the drive as GPT, add some flavor of HFS+ partition, and install macOS on it. – Spiff Mar 07 '17 at 01:22
  • @Spiff, thanks! You are right! I was able to create bootable disk with Mac Sierra like mentioned here http://www.macworld.com/article/3092900/macs/how-to-create-a-bootable-macos-sierra-installer-drive.html with Install Disk Creator. Now I was able to boot from USB, unmount disk0 with diskutil, verify it, however still can't repair it. However EFI created by below answer works. Now need to repair Windows boot. – Aleksey K Mar 07 '17 at 22:27
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Simpler solution was found here: https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/174522/182014

An EFI partition can be created via GParted Live CD/USB

  • Create 200MB drive (all my free space at the beginning):
    • Type: fat32
    • Label: EFI
  • Format it
  • Set boot flags (option available only after formatting) to "boot, esp"

enter image description here

Ready! After this manual installation performed successfully.

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Aleksey K
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