Resolved Is it possible to install Mojave and keep HFS+ ?

[apunkrockmonk]

I had a work issued 2017 MBP that kept kernel panicking all the time, even on a clean install. They issued me a loaner, right before giving it to me they imaged it with HFS+ High Sierra. I restored my APFS Mojave Time Machine backup to it and sure enough it is still on HFS+.

I know a previous member posted a solution but this one is an alternative.

 

[Riwam]

I had a work issued 2017 MBP that kept kernel panicking all the time, even on a clean install. They issued me a loaner, right before giving it to me they imaged it with HFS+ High Sierra. I restored my APFS Mojave Time Machine backup to it and sure enough it is still on HFS+.

I know a previous member posted a solution but this one is an alternative.

Would you be so kind to elaborate, to explain this more in detail what you did and in what order you proceeded.
I do not quite understand what you tell you did.
Are we not supposed to keep Time Machine in HFS+ ???
Thank you in advance
Ed

 

[apunkrockmonk]

Would you be so kind to elaborate, to explain this more in detail what you did and in what order you proceeded.
I do not quite understand what you tell you did.
Are we not supposed to keep Time Machine in HFS+ ???
Thank you in advance
Ed

I apologize for the delayed response. So my original intent wasn't to have Mojave running on HFS+, it just kind of worked out that way, personally I'd prefer I was on APFS.

But I believe the fact that the internal disk was currently formatted as HFS+ and that the internal disk was selected as the target of the TimeMachine backup restore (while formatted as HFS+) resulted in a Mojave install running HFS+ on an Apple SSD.

So I believe you'd be able to accomplish the same result by making a TimeMachine backup of your Mojave install on APFS, then boot into the machine's recovery partition, open disk utility, format the machine's internal disk as HFS+ and then finally restore your Mojave TimeMachine backup to the newly formatted HFS+ volume.

You could probably test this on an external disk if you want to make sure it works as expected prior to wiping your internal disk. I'll try and be more responsive if you have any follow up questions for me to address.

 

[pspman71]

SO even on Fusion Drive we have no choice? And Tuxera don’t work on Mojave? Hummm I think I’ll stay with High Sierra for now then.

https://www.tuxera.com/blog/new-release-tuxera-ntfs-for-mac-2018-with-macos-mojave-support/

 

[DimaVR]

I do t under stand? I upgraded my HD to Apple new file system during high Sierra beta during the install one time and it’s my boot drive and works fine. I have 128 GB flash drive and 2 TB data drive and both are and were converted like a year ago during beta and now I run 10.14.1 with no issues in my IMac 5K late 2015?

 

[Spazturtle]

@FishrrmanI was busy with a major project for the last couple of weeks and didn't have time to follow 10.14 development, and now that I'm back I'm told that even if we managed to trick 10.14 to run on an HFS+ drive Apple would refuse to offer any updates? Are they friggin' serious?? What's their explanation for this utter mockery? I've made my peace with the fact that installing 10.14 on HFS+ would involve some major trickery but this is absolutely ridiculous.

Apple doesn't offer updates, because the installer is unable to update 10.14 on HFS+, running 10.14 on HFS+ is not officially supported.

@FishrrmanI can only infer from what is publicly available. The first documentation started to appear in September 2016 after it had been announced at WWDC in June 2016, so around two years ago. Their first release on iOS was in early 2017, and on macOS in late 2017 with High Sierra. iOS is a whole different issue and not even remotely comparable to the complexities of macOS, so I won't go there.

We don't really know how long they have been secretly working on APFS behind the scenes. However, their public "beta" phase has been very short, and file systems can never be fully tested in a lab environment. A single year of public testing on SSD-equipped Macs before violently forcing it down every single user's throat regardless of size and physical storage type is courageous, to say the least.

APFS development became in 2009 when Apple decided not to pursue using ZFS and started development of their own file system.

 

[Riwam]

I apologize for the delayed response. So my original intent wasn't to have Mojave running on HFS+, it just kind of worked out that way, personally I'd prefer I was on APFS.

But I believe the fact that the internal disk was currently formatted as HFS+ and that the internal disk was selected as the target of the TimeMachine backup restore (while formatted as HFS+) resulted in a Mojave install running HFS+ on an Apple SSD.

So I believe you'd be able to accomplish the same result by making a TimeMachine backup of your Mojave install on APFS, then boot into the machine's recovery partition, open disk utility, format the machine's internal disk as HFS+ and then finally restore your Mojave TimeMachine backup to the newly formatted HFS+ volume.

You could probably test this on an external disk if you want to make sure it works as expected prior to wiping your internal disk. I'll try and be more responsive if you have any follow up questions for me to address.

Thank you very much for your kind explanation.

 

[Plutonius]

I gather that HFS+ can not be used on the boot drive for Mojave but can I keep my internal spinner drives in my cMP HFS+ ? Also, will the Mojave boot drive recognize my other cMP internal drives if they are still HFS+ ?

 

[Elebato]

I gather that HFS+ can not be used on the boot drive for Mojave but can I keep my internal spinner drives in my cMP HFS+ ? Also, will the Mojave boot drive recognize my other cMP internal drives if they are still HFS+ ?

Only Your boot drive will be converted to APFS, all other drives will stay untouched and will work as before. It is Your choice which file system You like to use on Your other drives.
As before, there is no Problem leaving HFS+ for Your other drives or e.g. exFAT for a drive like I have on one of my Mac Pros for easier file exchange with Boot Camp.

 

[Plutonius]

Only Your boot drive will be converted to APFS, all other drives will stay untouched and will work as before. It is Your choice which file system You like to use on Your other drives.
As before, there is no Problem leaving HFS+ for Your other drives or e.g. exFAT for a drive like I have on one of my Mac Pros for easier file exchange with Boot Camp.

Thank you.

My cMP Wifi is compatible with Mojave and it looks like I will have no problems with my non boot HFS+ drives or bootcamp drive.

Are there any other possible hardware issues I should worry about when I upgrade my cMP from High Sierra to Mojave ?

 

[chrfr]

Are there any other possible hardware issues I should worry about when I upgrade my cMP from High Sierra to Mojave ?

You need to be sure you have a graphics card that works with Mojave.

 

[Riwam]

Only Your boot drive will be converted to APFS, all other drives will stay untouched and will work as before. It is Your choice which file system You like to use on Your other drives.
As before, there is no Problem leaving HFS+ for Your other drives or e.g. exFAT for a drive like I have on one of my Mac Pros for easier file exchange with Boot Camp.

Both Fishrrman and apunkrockmonk indicate in their respective posts how they managed to keep their inner SSD drive in HFS+ running Mojave.
Fishrrman even explains how he intends to update Mojave when updates are released.
Where there is a will, in most cases there is a way.
Let's see how it gets further when Mojave gets newer releases 10.14.1, 10.14.2 and so on.
As long as extremely useful and unique applications like Disk Warrior (or Paragon HFS+ for Windows) do not reach a full compatibility with APFS, I will remain in High Sierra running HFS+.
Do not see any reason to rush to any new release of any OS!
See what happened with some people rushing to immediately install the "October" update 1809 of Microsoft Windows 10...
and conclude by yourself what wisdom is ...
Ed

 

[XGO7]

Sorry, a bit of a newb with CCC. Do you have a guide somewhere that shows you how to just copy the OS without copying the users folder?

 

[Riwam]

Sorry, a bit of a newb with CCC. Do you have a guide somewhere that shows you how to just copy the OS without copying the users folder?

In the CarbonCopyCloning window there is below, on the left side an indication if all files are to be cloned or some will be excluded.
You can select which files you want to be excluded from the cloning in the subsequent list of all files of the volume appearing if you choose the excluding way.
It's not complicated.
You can also instruct that the Recovery File should be cloned before the rest of the cloning takes place.
CCC is one of the most useful applications in the mac world but SuperDuper! is another possibility to perform bootable cloning and the basic cloning function of SuperDuper! is even free of charge!
Good luck.
Ed

 

[XGO7]

So I bought a secondary external SSD, formatted it to HFS+, transferred from my current drive (AFS External SSD) to the new HFS SSD, and it didnt work. Had the same lag times, if not longer. Perhaps this issue has more to it than just an formatting issue. I read elsewhere that Mojave has issues with External drives running their OS through USB 3. (which im currently doing).

EDIT: It does work, make sure you don't do a restart like me. You have to actually shut it down and boot it back up again. Worked great. Although I do hope they fix the issue so I can update.

UPDATE: Installed the SSD internally and everything works perfectly fine now.

 

[apunkrockmonk]

So I found that after 10.14.1 was released the update wasn't showing up in system preferences. I waited a couple weeks and then downloaded the combo update. The combo update refused to install on HFS+ so I booted to the recovery partition and attempted to convert to APFS. The conversion seemed successful, I could view my files on the CLI.

However I could no longer select my former 10.14.0 HFS+ (now APFS) as my boot volume, I could not bless the volume via startup disk nor via the CLI.

Ended up reformatting and restoring from backup.

 

[maflynn]

There's probably some work around, though you may be looking at more work, and headaches. I would just accept APFS at this point

 

[MrAverigeUser]

Do you remember who said that or link? Thanks.

Well - I am someone who does so since many years - and I posted this "philosophy" in several threads repeatedly... but I don´t know whether it was one of my postings which was mentioned by riwam .... I am sure I am not at all the only one who follows the "way of the least worries concerning upgradings to new OS" ...

I let others work as apples "test drivers" ... the only exception was my recent upgrade from IOS 11.4.1 to IOS 12.01 . I did this only, because a friend of mine was forced to do so and IOS was running stable and much better on his SE and his daily use is the same as mine and he uses the same SE 128Gb. So - it was nearly without risk. As this runs as hell - I will again be prudent with further versions of IOS 12 - never change a running system without very, very good reasons...
again: let others be your test drivers.

 

[getrealbro]

I have a few usefull apps like DiskWarrior, Tuxera NTFS or (in Bootcamp Windows) Paragon HFS+, which unfortunately would not work with an APFS formatted OSX drive.
......Now with Mojave... is there a simple way to have Mojave (once the final version is released) and keep HFS+ ???
Thank you very much in advance for any suggestion how to achieve it in a not risky and complicated way.
Ed

Have you considered simply dual booting Mojave and any previous OS X/macOS you like? That’s what I do to use “legacy” apps. Dual Booting works best if your internal drive is partitioned into a System and Data partition AND you keep almost all of your “documents” on the Data partition. This scheme facilitates testing of a new OS before the full commitment to the upgrade while your data is safely tucked away in it's own partition.

I’m currently dual booting Mojave and El Capitan. A clean install of Mojave is on an AFPS formatted 128GB SanDisk Ultra Plus SD card. And El Capitan is in a similar size HFS+ partition on the internal drive along with an HFS+ Data partition. When I deem Mojave stable enough for full time use, I’ll clone El Capitan onto an SD card or USB stick and then clone Mojave into the System partition of the internal drive. Meanwhile the Data partition continues to hold my documents etc. FWIW I’ve been doing this for decades. Anytime I need to run legacy software I just boot back in time off of the appropriate USB stick, SD card etc.

FWIW I skipped Sierra and High Sierra completely. They never got stable enough. But so far Mojave looks like a winner. The only issue now is upgrading/purchasing Office 365 and a few other apps/utilities.

GetRealBro

 

[Riwam]

Have you considered simply dual booting Mojave and any previous OS X/macOS you like? That’s what I do to use “legacy” apps. Dual Booting works best if your internal drive is partitioned into a System and Data partition AND you keep almost all of your “documents” on the Data partition. This scheme facilitates testing of a new OS before the full commitment to the upgrade while your data is safely tucked away in it's own partition.

I’m currently dual booting Mojave and El Capitan. A clean install of Mojave is on an AFPS formatted 128GB SanDisk Ultra Plus SD card. And El Capitan is in a similar size HFS+ partition on the internal drive along with an HFS+ Data partition. When I deem Mojave stable enough for full time use, I’ll clone El Capitan onto an SD card or USB stick and then clone Mojave into the System partition of the internal drive. Meanwhile the Data partition continues to hold my documents etc. FWIW I’ve been doing this for decades. Anytime I need to run legacy software I just boot back in time off of the appropriate USB stick, SD card etc.

FWIW I skipped Sierra and High Sierra completely. They never got stable enough. But so far Mojave looks like a winner. The only issue now is upgrading/purchasing Office 365 and a few other apps/utilities.

GetRealBro

Thank you very much for your suggestion of running dual MacOS.
I do it occasionally but with bootable USB external drives having older MacOS.
My Macs have only one inner SSD hard drive and it is already shared with a Bootcamp Windows 10 partition.
For unknown reasons my Bootcamp Windows in my MP 6.1 got corrupted and the current Bootcamp Assistent does not "assist" at all the user if a renewed installation is needed. It is a crippled very poor piece of software.
Neither Apple nor Microsoft feel truly responsible for improving it although, to my surprise, a very kind Apple supporter did his very best to help me by phone.
Eventually thanks to a Winclone image I had luckily kept, I managed to have again a working W10 in that Mac after losing my poor, left nerves unsuccessfully "bootcamping".
Therefore, after so much effort, further partitioning that only inner drive is not something I would risk.
Owners of the previous huge MacPros have 4 (or even 5) possible inner hard drives and if their graphic card allows Mojave, they could follow your suggestion with little risk.
It is no doubt a very good idea for Macs with more than one inner drive or without a Bootcamp partition, which unfortunately is not my situation.
Thank you very much GetRealBro!
Ed

 

[getrealbro]

FWIW further partitioning of your internal drive is not required to Dual Boot OSX/MacOS. Instead of a partition on your internal drive, you can use an external drive for most/all of your “data”*. That way the data on that external drive is always available when you boot from a different USB drive, SD card, etc. with a different OS X/Mac OS to get to your legacy apps.

The mental step is to realize that there is very little special about the folder named Documents in your Home folder. Almost all of your “documents” can be stored elsewhere. And the documents that are stored on an external drive, etc. are available regardless of the what internal drive, external drive, SD card, USB stick , etc. that contains the currently running OS.

GetRealBro

* This works much better on Mac desktops, but it can be implemented on MacBooks too. After all, Apple configures low end MacBooks and MacBook Pros with such tiny SSDs these days, that some kind of external storage is almost inevitable.

 

[Isamilis]

Just curious... what are benefits of install Mojave in HFS+? It seems, Apple has locked down boot drive to use APFS, and we have to be like tom-and-jerry to keep using hfs+

 

[Riwam]

Just curious... what are benefits of install Mojave in HFS+? It seems, Apple has locked down boot drive to use APFS, and we have to be like tom-and-jerry to keep using hfs+

Thank you Ismailis for your interest and your question.

As I wrote in the initial post of this thread, exchange between HFS+ and Bootcamp NTFS partitions is easy using for instance Tuxers NTFS on the MacOS side and Paragon HFS+ on the Windows side, although Paragon says they have achieved results regarding APFS but...unfortunately not free of charge.

A second reason is that, whenever I had boot problems with any MacOS partition in any version of MacOS/OSX I run, the only application that in most cases "rebuilds" (repairs) the faulty partition (booting from an external MacOS/OSX drive to the faulty one in order to do so) is DiskWarrior
AFAIK they have not yet managed to be able to "rebuild״ (repair) a boot hard drive in APFS, although they are trying to achieve it.
Since DiskWarrior in any version (4.4, 5, 5.1) had so often helped me to get out of trouble, I prefer to wait until they bring a version fully compatible with APFS.

Another point is often mentioned here, namely TimeMachine still needing HFS+.

I am maybe a too scary person... but for the time being I remain in High Sierra for two reasons:
1) Mojave is still too young and will in time have to correct many bugs which will be discovered by its users (resulting in 10.14.2, 10.14.3 and so on)
2) because High Sierra still allowed me to keep HFS+.

That is my honest answer to your question.
Thank you very much Isamilis!
Ed

 

[chucker23n1]

As I wrote in the initial post of this thread, exchange between HFS+ and Bootcamp NTFS partitions is easy using for instance Tuxers NTFS on the MacOS side and Paragon HFS+ on the Windows side, although Paragon says they have achieved results regarding APFS but...unfortunately not free of charge.

Read/write access to APFS remains a problem, yes.

A second reason is that, whenever I had boot problems with any MacOS partition in any version of MacOS/OSX I run, the only application that in most cases "rebuilds" (repairs) the faulty partition (booting from an external MacOS/OSX drive to the faulty one in order to do so) is DiskWarrior

Er, sure, but the only reason those problems happen in the first place is HFS+'s notorious reliability problems. APFS's design will make it far less likely that you'll run into those problems in the first place.

Another point is often mentioned here, namely TimeMachine still needing HFS+.

That's for the backup target, though. You don't want to backup to a boot volume, do you?

 

[Riwam]

Read/write access to APFS remains a problem, yes.



Er, sure, but the only reason those problems happen in the first place is HFS+'s notorious reliability problems. APFS's design will make it far less likely that you'll run into those problems in the first place.

In my computer experience I had a lot of problems with different Windows but not very often with MacOS/OSX Operation Systems from my first Intel Mac running Snow Leopard to my present one running High Sierra.
Different people wrote posts in this forum precisely saying they did not feel any need of APFS since JHFS+ worked fine for them.
Your opinion about "notorious reliability problems" of JHFS+ does not correspond to my modest experience.
True, from time to time I experienced for instance a slow booting or (in very rare occasions) not booting at all and Disk Warrior corrected them avoiding me reinstallings. However I see it more as an unlucky combinatiin of non perfect hardware (what is perfect in this world?) and Mac Operation System faults... than a result of the file system used.
As an analogy, Windows freezes and blue screens were not eliminated by having NTFS instead of FAT32.
Those dreaded situations were caused by OS problems often in conjunction with the hardware people bought, not optimized for the OS since not made by Microsoft.
Windows 10 is much more reliable than let's say Windows 95 because of the present OS architecture, as far as I, being just a plain computer user, can judge.
Ed