I decided to do a fresh install of High Sierra from El Capitan to a machine that was bootcamped. It's a mid-2010 17" MBP with an SSD. These are the steps I took:
- Download High Sierra from the App Store
- Write the image to a 32 GB USB drive using the terminal command
- Boot to the USB drive and format the SSD to APFS
And now I'm stuck. HS won't install to the drive, saying it isn't Mac file system. But it also won't let me format to anything but one of the APFS variants.
I read that internet recovery should work, but alas it does precisely the same thing.
Do I need to use another Mac to find the El Capitan installer, write that to the USB drive, then do a fresh install of that while reformatting to Mac file system? Would it even let me format?
Or do I need to upgrade the firmware to deal with APFS?
This whole thing just seems so poorly thought out. The only reason I was going to HS in the first place is because it no longer showed up in my "Purchased" list in the App Store or with a search. The Disk Utility happily let me format to APFS, but cannot use it, and won't let me format to anything else?
Thanks for your help.
EDIT -- SOLVED: I removed the SSD (nice that I can with these older machines!) and popped it into my Windows desktop, removed the APFS volume and made a new exFAT volume in its place. Put it back in the MBP and now Disk Utility is letting me format to Mac Extended. The installer let me select the newly formatted drive, so it looks like I'm in the clear.
[Mods may delete or leave here in case someone else finds it helpful. Can't seem to edit title to show solved.]
- Download High Sierra from the App Store
- Write the image to a 32 GB USB drive using the terminal command
- Boot to the USB drive and format the SSD to APFS
And now I'm stuck. HS won't install to the drive, saying it isn't Mac file system. But it also won't let me format to anything but one of the APFS variants.
I read that internet recovery should work, but alas it does precisely the same thing.
Do I need to use another Mac to find the El Capitan installer, write that to the USB drive, then do a fresh install of that while reformatting to Mac file system? Would it even let me format?
Or do I need to upgrade the firmware to deal with APFS?
This whole thing just seems so poorly thought out. The only reason I was going to HS in the first place is because it no longer showed up in my "Purchased" list in the App Store or with a search. The Disk Utility happily let me format to APFS, but cannot use it, and won't let me format to anything else?
Thanks for your help.
EDIT -- SOLVED: I removed the SSD (nice that I can with these older machines!) and popped it into my Windows desktop, removed the APFS volume and made a new exFAT volume in its place. Put it back in the MBP and now Disk Utility is letting me format to Mac Extended. The installer let me select the newly formatted drive, so it looks like I'm in the clear.
[Mods may delete or leave here in case someone else finds it helpful. Can't seem to edit title to show solved.]
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