Reformatting hard drive for Catalina

[JeremyRaven]

Hi,

As a developer I need to be able to download the latest Xcode build for Apple but in turn I have to also have Catalina installed on my system.
Im using an old late 2009 iMac and had to patch my computer in order to install Mojave a while back. In the process of trying to install Catalina now, my hard drive is required to be APFS formatted. Apparently installing Mojave should've done this conversion for me automatically - I read somewhere - but my drive is still Mac OS Extended.

So I need to reformat my hard drive to APFS - my question is can I do this without having to erase my disk, so essentially leaving everything on it as is - run a backup of course and then try to reformat?
Or do I have to wipe everything off it and run the reformatter?
Im not a hardware guy so any helpful information would be great.

Thanks for your time.

 

[mikehalloran]

Only if DosDude1 writes a patch that lets it happen. Last announcement I read from him, he will only make it available for the 5.1 Mac Pro after Apple releases the final version.

He may have changed his mind — this was a few months ago. His web site is easy to find.

Catalina like Mojave requires graphics acceleration support. Good luck with that on a late 2009–2011 iMac.

 

[JeremyRaven]

Thanks Mike, I’ve managed successfully using a patch, to install and run Mojave. Do you think a Mac late 2012 will be able to run Catalina though?