Catalina Patcher (DosDude) Reversion to High Sierra

[mslilyelise]

Hi everyone. I used to have an account on here *ages* ago, like over ten years ago. Nice to be back. My first Mac was the Mid 2005 iBook G4 1.42Ghz and I've been in and out of the fold since.

I recently picked up a Mid 2010 Unibody MacBook. Had one of these when they first came out, and now here I am again. I discovered DosDude's Catalina Patcher, and I have a question.

If I want to revert back to High Sierra, can I do so, and how? I have a duplicate of my internal hard drive already made with SuperDuper and it can boot the system. If Catalina is a bust, is it as simple as connecting my backup of HighSierra and restoring the internal drive using that image? I don't want to get stuck in Catalina if it doesn't work. I've created the patched installer using a USB drive, and I've confirmed I can boot into it, but I haven't pulled the trigger yet.

If this doesn't belong here, feel free to move it, there were so many macOS options I couldn't figure out where this would go. Thanks everyone for any help you can provide.

 

[Nguyen Duc Hieu]

Install Catalina to an external disk (USB enclosure) then. If you don't like it, just unplug and boot from internal SSD.

 

[BrianBaughn]

I'm thinking comparing the two versions of macOS wouldn't be "fair" with one of them on an external.

How does SuperDuper handle recovery partitions? I think that would be a factor in how you get back to High Sierra from Catalina.

 

[Fishrrman]

If HS is running fine for you on a 2010 MB, I see NO REASON to upgrade it, unless you need it because you have software that won't run without it.

But if you can't resist...
...I'd go with Nguyen's suggestion:

Get ANOTHER small external USB3 drive.
A 250gb SSD would be fine -- they are CHEAP.
Put it into an enclosure like this:

SABRENT 2.5 Inch SATA to USB 3.0 Tool Free External Hard Drive Enclosure [Optimized for SSD, Support UASP SATA III] Black (EC-UASP)

SABRENT 2.5 Inch SATA to USB 3.0 Tool Free External Hard Drive Enclosure [Optimized for SSD, Support UASP SATA III] Black (EC-UASP)

tinyurl.com

(also cheap)

Now, install Catalina onto the external SSD.
This gives you a "second boot drive" to play with, while leaving your existing HS install alone.