I'm trying to install Windows 8 through a bootable USB flash drive, in UEFI Mode. However, while it does work when the drive is formatted as FAT for some versions of Windows 8, the version I want to install has a install.wim file bigger than 4Gb, so I have to use an NTFS file system on the flash drive, but I cannot boot in UEFI mode from it. In both cases I use a GPT partition table. Is booting from NTFS not possible in UEFI mode (strange, as is the file system used by Windows) or am I doing something wrong?
UEFI Boot – How to Boot an NTFS Drive with UEFI
bootntfsuefiwindows 8
Related Solutions
On a normal hard disk installation of most any EFI-based OS, you'll have, at a minimum, one FAT EFI System Partition (ESP) and one partition for the OS itself. The ESP holds a boot loader for the OS, possibly along with files to support the boot loader (fonts, configuration files, drivers, etc.), and possibly even the OS's kernel. The OS partition holds more-or-less the same OS files you'd find on a BIOS-based installation of the same OS. Depending on the OS, you might have additional partitions, too -- data partitions, a swap partition, etc.
There can be exceptions to this rule, particularly for installation media or emergency disks. For instance, you could put the whole OS in the ESP. Also, most EFIs are happy to boot from partitions that are not ESPs, so you could just have one big non-ESP FAT partition, as you've got. This can work fine for an emergency disk, but I wouldn't recommend setting up a regular OS installation in this way; I'd use a separate ESP and OS partition.
Note that a standard EFI can read FAT, but cannot read NTFS, ext2/3/4fs, HFS+, or any other filesystem. (Apple's EFI can read HFS+, and so can read its boot loader from a Mac OS X root partition rather than from the ESP, but Apple's EFI is the exception rather than the rule. A few EFIs also have ISO-9660 filesystem drivers -- but again, they're exceptions to the rule.) Because FAT is the only filesystem that's guaranteed to be readable by EFI, an attempt to build a boot disk that does not include a FAT partition is doomed to failure, except of course when used on those unusual EFIs that support additional filesystems.
I can't provide a procedure to set up a Windows emergency disk to use separate EFI and Windows partitions, since I'm more of a Linux person than a Windows person. Unless you run into a specific problem with your approach, though, I'd just stick with it; at least you know it works.
The article Problem with installing Centos 6.3 on USB Stick might pertain to your problem :
If you ever face a "kernel panic" issue when trying to boot Centos 6 from your USB stick, this is due to the EFI bootloader not pointing to the root of your USB stick.
To fix this, go under the EFI folder in your USB stick, then find those files ending with *.conf and use a text editor to change the
root=to your USB device. In my case, it is some things likelive:UUID=UUID_OF_Partitionorlive:label=Label_OF_PartitionAnother note to take care is instead of installing using UNetBootIn or ISO2USB, we can actually use Fedora Live USB Creator. The good thing about using it is that you can find your USB device's UUID under
syslinux\syslinux.cfg.
See also this link suggesting adding rootdelay=90 reboot=a,w in grub.cfg.
Check also for BIOS update from the manufacturer of your computer.
Best Answer
From the Wikipedia article on UEFI:
Personally I've yet to encounter any motherboard manufacturer who has implemented NTFS boot support in their UEFI modules.
Update: As mentioned in the comments below, two years after I posted the above there are now at least a few motherboards available with UEFI NTFS modules.