6

I'm trying to do a dual-boot installation of Ubuntu and I've noticed that there is already an EFI partition in my SSD. Do I need to create a new one for my Ubuntu Partition?

Disk partitions

Marco Castro
  • 505
  • Very likely yes, but are you currently using the partition named Ubuntu (D:) ? – Itakura Jan 26 '20 at 01:13
  • I’m not but I’ve been trying to install it with that partition being unallocated and I just won’t install, so I thought maybe if I formatted as FAT it might just do the job – Marco Castro Jan 26 '20 at 01:15
  • What properties have you set your boot drive to? (Partition Scheme, File System, Target System etc) – Itakura Jan 26 '20 at 01:25
  • 1
    You can only have one ESP per drive. You can have a second FAT32 partition with .efi boot files. Some vendors do that for their vendor files. And a few do that for dual installs of Windows, so grub can separately boot them. But only one ESP per drive which will be the partition UEFI uses to boot from. You are showing exFAT with Ubuntu description?? Linux needs Linux formats usually ext4. – oldfred Jan 26 '20 at 03:46
  • @oldfred That is correct, I don’t know why I though exFat was a good idea. But then I’m curios if I’m trying to Ubuntu as dual-boot is gonna boot up from that windows EFI partition? Or I have to deallocate that partition and install the one that comes with Grub or the Ubuntu installer – Marco Castro Jan 26 '20 at 03:50
  • Ubuntu automatically uses any existing ESP on the first drive. Many that are installing to a second drive and do not have an ESP on first drive then get grub installer errors. That is Ubiquity issue not grub. You will get another folder /EFI/ubuntu along side the /EFI/Microsoft folder in the ESP. Most do not backup ESP as you can just reinstall boot loaders, but I like to back up the ESP also. To reinstall boot loaders, you do need a Windows repair/recovery disk for Windows and an Ubuntu live installer. So allocate several flash drives for emergency repair, and hope you do not need them. – oldfred Jan 26 '20 at 14:36

2 Answers2

5

No.

In fact, I created one (green arrow), and the installer ignored it, and used the existing Windows one (red arrow).

enter image description here enter image description here

Organic Marble
  • 23,641
  • 15
  • 70
  • 122
0

Ubuntu UEFI Community has instructions for creating EFI partitions and in the documentation they mention the following:

(Also there is good information about the EFI partition).

Creating an EFI System Partition

If you are manually partitioning your disk in the Ubuntu installer, you need to make sure you have an EFI System Partition (ESP) set up. This partition holds EFI-mode boot loaders and related files.

  1. If your disk already contains an ESP (eg if your computer had Windows 8 preinstalled), it can be used for Ubuntu too. Do not format it. It is strongly recommended to have only 1 ESP per disk.

  2. An ESP can be created via a recent version of GParted (the Gparted version included in the 12.04 disk is OK), and must have the following attributes:

    • Mount point: /boot/efi (remark: no need to set this mount point when using the manual partitioning, the Ubuntu installer will detect it automatically)
    • Size: minimum 100Mib. 200MiB recommended.
    • Type: FAT32
    • Other: needs a "boot" flag.

UEFI - Ubuntu documentation

Marco Castro
  • 505