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M3Stang

macrumors regular
Original poster
Oct 26, 2015
183
66
I looked through the unsupported Mac thread and googled but could not find what I was looking for. Do you NEED the APFS Rom patch on a Mac that DOES NOT support High Sierra natively? I dont mind if that other bootloader needs to be running to boot it without the patch. I cant seem to find if I need to have the actual ROM patch or not. I don't want to install any ROM patches but dont mind the third party bootloader as I can get rid of that with a format. I know some people wanted the patch so that it would look pretty but I dont care to see the boot process or what it looks like. I also dont plan on putting an SSD in this machine right now since it runs very fast with El Cap. Probably the fastest HDD I have ever had in a Mac. Thanks!
 
Wanted to update, and it works fine with just the APFS patch. I did not have to install the ROM patch.
 
TBH your posts may lead to confusion to the reader as well..
I get the impression that your questions are self-answered in the same post.

Anyway a few facts that may help you:
- High Sierra can be installed (whether natively or patched) in HFS+ or APFS , from Mojave and up it's only APFS

-The APFS format is optimized for SSDs and will drop the I/O speed (read: overall performance) of a spinning disk significantly.
The improvement after replacing a HDD by a SSD can be spectacular.

- supposing you installed Mojave with the DosDude Patcher: If it's recommended to install in combination with e.g. a ROM patch there's a very good reason for that.. which is not something cosmetical.
 
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Thanks for the info! I know it can make a huge difference I’ve done it to several MacBooks I have, it’s just that I spent a bit more on this one than the others and got it mainly to collect and play around with. $50 on an SSD with DRAM ends up going in the wrong place with this one since it’s not a daily one 😄. I’ll probably end up changing it at some point, maybe if it ends up being able to run Big Sur. I just hate taking these pre unibody ones apart to change the drives out of, very tedious. I was shocked at how well it runs with the HDD in it even with APFS. I’m sure the SSD will make a huge difference when I do finally make the change. It can’t play YouTube at 1080p60 which makes me less likely to really use it much more than just to look at it amongst my other ones 😂.
 
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