Create EFI partition before installing Windows 10
Most likely, you won't need larger ESP (EFI System Partition). Windows OS loader is rather small and Fedora will most likely just install GRUB on ESP and place the rest of its boot files in /boot
which will be on a separate partition anyway. Unless you're going to experiment with unusual Linux setups (like EFISTUB booting etc.), 100 MB should be sufficient.
If you want to have a larger ESP just in case, you can create one using Windows installation media before the partitioning step.
How to manually create ESP using Windows installation media
Before the partitioning step:
(Technically, you could also do this on the partitioning step and click Refresh afterwards.)
- Press Shift+F10 to open Command Line.
- Type
diskpart
Enter. Diskpart will take a while to launch. - Type
list disk
Enter A list of disks will be printed. Note the number next to yours (most likely0
). Select that disk:select disk 0
Enter. - Create ESP:
create partition efi size=500
Enter (500
is partition size in MiB). - Exit Diskpart:
exit
Enter.
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Lolu
Updated on September 18, 2022Comments
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Lolu almost 2 years
I'm currently using a dual boot setup on my laptop, with Windows 10 and Fedora and I'm planning to replace my HDD with an SSD for obvious reasons.
I'll make a clean installation of both OS, but I've got a doubt regarding the EFI partition: since Windows creates a 100 mb big ESP by default (if I remember correctly) and that's not enough, I've read that the best way to have a bigger EFI partition is to create it before the installation of Windows 10.
Is that right? Or is there a better way to proceed?
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Lolu over 6 yearsThank you very much, I'll try this! The reason I' m asking is that I had some troubles with the partition size in the past when I installed refind.
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gronostaj over 6 yearsI'm not familiar with rEFInd, but creating a larger ESP may be a good idea if you're going to use it.
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Kriegalex about 4 yearsI can give you a reason to have a bigger EFI with dual boot: modern linux supports upgrading firmware. I recently got an error message because the firmware update tool didn't have enough space in EFI.