For me, I had an existing copy of Mac OS X 10.8.2 installed, so I simply did a Time Machine backup that I later restored without any problems (more on that below).

Because of this, make damn sure you’ve backed up all of your necessary content. This is because we’ll be redoing the entire partition structure of your HDD or SSD. My below guide is based off of a guide by “mac-hacks” on MacRumors, which can be found here. Now, I’m working the other way around, where I’m getting Windows to boot as natively as possible on a Mac. I’m pretty advanced when it comes to hackintoshing, which is where you can install Mac OS X natively onto a regular ‘ole PC. Interestingly, I found great interest in all of this. Boot times through the traditional BIOS method isn’t dramatically far off afterwards, either. After you set it up the way you want, it’ll more than likely slow down. But as mentioned above, this was on a fresh install of Windows 8. All told, the boot times have increased tremendously. I completed this on my 2012 base-13″ MacBook Air. Keep in mind that everybody’s Mac hardware is different. If you follow the steps closely, you shouldn’t run into any issues. In addition, it will take a fair amount of time to complete. And quite honestly, that’s the only reason I see switching from the traditional BIOS method to the EFI method. Going this route isn’t so simple, and you’ll more than likely run into hardware compatibility problems afterwards that only Apple can fix with EFI updates. For example, your boot time could go from 25 seconds to as little as 3, but that’s on a fresh of install of Windows and isn’t very representative of real-world numbers.

One of the more obvious reasons for switching to EFI from the Mac’s virtual BIOS/Boot Camp method is that your boot times will greatly improve, especially if you’re using an SSD (see the video example below).

Rufus install windows 7 on imac 2009