Formatting
October 6, 2021 10:42 PM Subscribe
I have a 2013 MacBook Air that’r running Mojave and I want to upgrade to Big Sur, which won’t install because it requires installation on drive using APFS, and I’ve been unable to convert my current harddrive to this filesystem.
My hard drive is in OSX Extended (Journaled). However I haven’t been able to convert my drive to APFS using Disk Utility either in regular or Recovery Mode. The options to do so in Disk Utility are grayed out.
The next might be to back up onto an external, completely wipe and reformat my hard drive, then restore from the backup. This terrifies me. I’ve also heard that there’s some compatibility conflict with time machine and APFS, which adds to my terror.
Possibly relevant as to how/why I’m running Mojave on OsX extended: The computer had been running osx 10.12 but I loaded a time machine backup from a 2019 Mac that had been running Mojave and presumably was using APFS. The initial
restoration kinda worked, but kinda glitched out a lot, and after about an hour of runtime, the OS popped up a system message that basically said “we have to reboot and install critical updates”, after which things have worked fine. But I think in adapting my Time Machine from a newer system to the older hardware, it may have done something funny.
My hard drive is in OSX Extended (Journaled). However I haven’t been able to convert my drive to APFS using Disk Utility either in regular or Recovery Mode. The options to do so in Disk Utility are grayed out.
The next might be to back up onto an external, completely wipe and reformat my hard drive, then restore from the backup. This terrifies me. I’ve also heard that there’s some compatibility conflict with time machine and APFS, which adds to my terror.
Possibly relevant as to how/why I’m running Mojave on OsX extended: The computer had been running osx 10.12 but I loaded a time machine backup from a 2019 Mac that had been running Mojave and presumably was using APFS. The initial
restoration kinda worked, but kinda glitched out a lot, and after about an hour of runtime, the OS popped up a system message that basically said “we have to reboot and install critical updates”, after which things have worked fine. But I think in adapting my Time Machine from a newer system to the older hardware, it may have done something funny.
I’ve also heard that there’s some compatibility conflict with time machine and APFS, which adds to my terror.
My laptop drive is APFS and Time Machine seems to work fine.
Carbon Copy Cloner was my go-to when making snapshots of Apple hard drives for backup and imaging purposes.
First, you use CCC to back up the internal drive to the external drive. Then you verify the backup.
Finally, you use Recovery Mode to reformat the internal drive and install the new version of OS X, using Migration Assistant to copy files from the CCC backup to your new OS X setup.
It sounds like a lot, but it is actually quite easy. Most of your time will be spent waiting for things to finish.
Another option is that you instead make a Time Machine backup of your internal hard drive to a clean external drive. You can use that backup directly with Migration Assistant, instead of using the backup made with CCC.
Migration Assistant is made available to you automatically when booting up a Mac, which has been set up with a fresh installation of Mac OS X (either from the factory or after using Recovery Mode). Migration Assistant does the hard work of taking a backup and putting files and folders in the right places.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 12:50 AM on October 7, 2021 [3 favorites]
My laptop drive is APFS and Time Machine seems to work fine.
Carbon Copy Cloner was my go-to when making snapshots of Apple hard drives for backup and imaging purposes.
First, you use CCC to back up the internal drive to the external drive. Then you verify the backup.
Finally, you use Recovery Mode to reformat the internal drive and install the new version of OS X, using Migration Assistant to copy files from the CCC backup to your new OS X setup.
It sounds like a lot, but it is actually quite easy. Most of your time will be spent waiting for things to finish.
Another option is that you instead make a Time Machine backup of your internal hard drive to a clean external drive. You can use that backup directly with Migration Assistant, instead of using the backup made with CCC.
Migration Assistant is made available to you automatically when booting up a Mac, which has been set up with a fresh installation of Mac OS X (either from the factory or after using Recovery Mode). Migration Assistant does the hard work of taking a backup and putting files and folders in the right places.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 12:50 AM on October 7, 2021 [3 favorites]
Adding to this good advice: there is nothing that makes me feel more comfortable when doing this type of computer work than having a simple copy of your data on an external drive, in addition to whatever Time Machines, Carbon Copy Clones etc you may have. Just copy your home directory. Software can be reinstalled and an OS can be fixed or replaced, but the loss of your data is a disaster.
posted by lhauser at 7:39 PM on October 7, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by lhauser at 7:39 PM on October 7, 2021 [1 favorite]
This thread is closed to new comments.
tl;dr Unmount the disk as per reference 1 below. More thorough steps are below.
(I did something like the following in the past fortnight because Mojave is done for security upgrades -- I may roll back to Catalina because a core part of macOS called WindowServer is running at high CPU on my early-2015 MacBook Pro. The same instructions can be adapted for Catalina mostly by substituting Catalina in place of Big Sur.)
Make your backup to an external disk, then reboot while holding down Cmd and 'r' keys up to the computer chimes, which will get you into Recovery Mode. Use Disk Utility and select your main OS partition (unlocking it if you've set an encryption password), click the eject key to unmount it and then go Edit -> Convert to APFS to make the conversion.
If this doesn't stick, you've got an external disk with a recent Time Machine backup, right? So you can also use Disk Utility to add a 16GB partition for the installer to your external disk (one of the tabs says 'partition' and allows you to click the + to add a partition, giving it a name like 'installer' and size 16GB). There's a command-line invocation of the Big Sur tool to 'create installer media' which needs Terminal and:
sudo /Applications/Install\ macOS\ Big\ Sur.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/installer --nointeraction --downloadAssets
Then with your recent Time Machine backup and external installer, hold \_ or Alt/Option when you reboot to selet the installer and run from there. Again use DiskUtility to erase the Mac's main partition and replace it with APFS (which I could not encrypt at installation time but came back to via Settings -> Security & Privacy -> FileVault). Once you've created the APFS partition, quit Disk Utiltiy to run the installer, and when it offers you to import user settings from a Time Machine backup you can use your external disk.
Notes to add to your troubleshooting
1: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/8613766 -- convert an SSD to APFS
2: https://eclecticlight.co/2017/09/08/preparing-to-upgrade-to-high-sierra/ ...when APFS conversion was part of the upgrade process
3: https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT201372 -- creating installers on external disks and thumb drives
4: https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/How+to+create+a+bootable+USB+drive/66371 ...with pictures
posted by k3ninho at 12:47 AM on October 7, 2021 [2 favorites]