Why does Disk Utility create EFI partitions on external disks? A technical told me about the EFI partition that...


...it's only there in case your computer will do an EFI update so the update files can be loaded onto the EFI partition.


This is consistant with what Wikipedia says:


The EFI partition is initially blank and not used for booting. However, the EFI partition is used as a staging area for firmware updates.


Apples's Software Update utility does not update the firmware of non apple hardware.

Question

Why then does Disk Utility create EFI partitions on external disks?

/dev/disk1
       #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
       0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *500.1 GB   disk1
       1:                        EFI                         209.7 MB   disk1s1
       2:       Microsoft Basic Data HEAP                    150.0 GB   disk1s2
       3:                  Apple_HFS Backup matt             150.1 GB   disk1s3
       4:                  Apple_HFS Freedom                 199.5 GB   disk1s4
So you can image the drive and get things set up while your new drive is in an enclosure and only swap it into your Mac as an internal drive once it is tested and ready to go. Also, not having to code special exceptions when to and when not to write an EFI partition is sound engineering practice.  

You can't write buggy code if you don't write any code.