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Upgrading a mid-2012 MacBook Pro from Yosemite to Mojave

A

adamschneider

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Oct 29, 2005
21
0
Portland, OR
My workhorse MacBook Pro (mid-2012, non-Retina, 16GB RAM, 1TB SSD) has been great for the four years that I've been using it, but more and more I'm running into software updates that don't support Yosemite. I'm thinking it's time for an update. I only upgrade my OS every 3 or 4 years, because I have a lot of power-user stuff going on under the hood. I do all the development for my Web site on my Mac, so it has to be able to run a ton of different Perl modules, as well as ImageMagick, GD, and a whole bunch of other weird stuff. Getting everything set up properly involves a lot of late nights and virtual duct tape; I don't want to have to do it twice!

First of all, should I definitely go up to Mojave, or are there compelling reasons I might want to do High Sierra instead?

Second, I've been thinking about how I'm going to do this with (hopefully) the least amount of pain and risk. Please let me know if this seems like a solid plan:

1) Buy a new SSD and an external enclosure (already done).

2) Install a clean copy of Mojave on the new drive.

3) When I have spare time, occasionally boot my Mac from the external drive and get accustomed to Mojave, and get everything set up the way I want it. (Disable SIP. Adjust the font smoothing settings. Install perl modules, Homebrew, Parallels, Adobe CS6, MS Office, etc.) While doing this, I figure I'll unmount my internal Yosemite drive just so neither I nor Mojave gets confused.

4) Meanwhile, continue living my normal life and getting my work done by booting from the internal Yosemite drive while setting the new drive aside for a while.

5) Repeat #3 and #4 until I'm sure I've got everything set up in Mojave the way I need it, and then:

6) Clone my Yosemite drive onto a backup, just in case.

7) Boot into Mojave — because Yosemite won't be able to read the new APFS drive — and copy over my documents, preferences, etc. from the old drive to the new one. (Can I trust the Migration Assistant to do this for me?)

8) Physically swap the drives, so Yosemite is now external and Mojave is internal.

Any reason this elaborate scheme might not work? Anything else I should know about Mojave on a 2012 MBP?
 
junkw said:
I guess that's why people use docker etc...so your website environment is not bound to your mac environment
Click to expand...
Meh, it's not "bound" to anything. It's just really nice to be able to work on stuff locally and not even need an Internet connection.

But that's kind of beside the point. Even if I didn't have all this Apache stuff to worry about, I still don't like to throw my entire electronic life into turmoil. I'll never be an early adopter (obviously).
 
And after you get your Mojave installed and spend 3-4 days in tweaking it, you'll get around to trying to run CS6 that was on your list only to find it doens't work any more. Oh.. So you are then left like me with the side of do you upgrade from an old but working OS to something newer just to keep othe software running and connect your new iPad, but be forced into running a VM version of El.Capitan to have an OS that will work with CS6.

BTW: Mojave will also force your SSD into a new APFS that means you cannot partition the drive to dual boot. It's a mess any way you look at it.
 
roadkill401 said:
And after you get your Mojave installed and spend 3-4 days in tweaking it, you'll get around to trying to run CS6 that was on your list only to find it doens't work any more.
Click to expand...
Hmm. Are you sure that CS6 won't run in Mojave? I've done some searches and I thought I found some people reporting that they got it to work after some tweaking or a fresh install. I guess that's the first thing I'll check on. (If it definitely is a no-go, will CS6 work on High Sierra? I'm fine with that as a compromise.)

I wasn't planning to have a dual-boot drive; I can't be flipping back and forth all day.
 
I gave up with the broken functions inside of CS6 when trying to get it playing nice with Sierra. I can't say if that was just within Photoshop and Illustrator, of if it extended past it to Dreamweaver. I use Dreamweaver to do my small personal web project, and it was Apple forcing erase/reformat/install of the OS to fix other problems that I had with contracts/facetime/iMessage (that turns out to be on their end issues).

I for the longest time just had a dual boot for my iMac with a clean 10.11.6 install on it with CS6 loaded, and for the odd time that I wanted to work on the web site, I went through the hassle to reboot into the other install. Worked for the most part. Then I got involved with doing PodCasts and working with LogicPro. That forced an upgrade to HighSierra, that has since moved into Mojave that forces the SSD inside my iMac to be APFS that makes having a dual boot impossible as for some reason it loses access to the second partition from the option boot menu. I just gave in and finally got it ported over to VMware 11

Good luck.

And if you find a not too expensive alternative to Dreamweaver that makes sense/easy to learn and does it better. Let me know.
 
roadkill401 said:
I gave up with the broken functions inside of CS6 when trying to get it playing nice with Sierra. I can't say if that was just within Photoshop and Illustrator, of if it extended past it to Dreamweaver. I use Dreamweaver to do my small personal web project, and it was Apple forcing erase/reformat/install of the OS to fix other problems that I had with contracts/facetime/iMessage (that turns out to be on their end issues).

I for the longest time just had a dual boot for my iMac with a clean 10.11.6 install on it with CS6 loaded, and for the odd time that I wanted to work on the web site, I went through the hassle to reboot into the other install. Worked for the most part. Then I got involved with doing PodCasts and working with LogicPro. That forced an upgrade to HighSierra, that has since moved into Mojave that forces the SSD inside my iMac to be APFS that makes having a dual boot impossible as for some reason it loses access to the second partition from the option boot menu. I just gave in and finally got it ported over to VMware 11

Good luck.

And if you find a not too expensive alternative to Dreamweaver that makes sense/easy to learn and does it better. Let me know.
Click to expand...
You can dual boot with Mojave, just create a second partition in HFS+ for your other version of macos and install
 
Buy the bare SSD and a USB3 2.5" enclosure (these are cheap).

Put the SSD into the enclosure.

Use Disk Utility to erase (initialize) it to APFS, GUID partition format.

Install a brand-new copy of Mojave onto the EXTERNAL SSD.

Go through the setup process, and use setup assistant to "migrate" stuff from your [internal] Yosemite drive to the new Mojave SSD.

Now, "check things out" -- you want to see what apps still work, what DOESN'T work, etc., BEFORE you "do the disk swap".

THIS WAY YOU STILL HAVE A WORKING MACBOOK ALL THE WHILE.
(shouting intentional)

Do things look good with the new Mojave install?
OK, NOW it's time to open the MacBook and swap the drives.

PAY ATTENTION TO THE CONDITION OF THE DRIVE RIBBON CABLE WHILE THE BACK IS OFF. This is a known "problem" with the 2012 design. If you see wear points, might be worth ordering another cable.

Once the new drive is in, does the MacBook boot up and run ok?
If so, FINE.
Be sure to go to the startup disk pref pane and re-designate the new SSD as the boot drive.

DON'T erase the old HDD just yet.
Put it into the USB3 enclosure and just "hang onto it" for a week or two, so that you are SURE the new drive and new OS are performing satisfactorily.

If that's the case, you can re-purpose the old drive for extra storage, perhaps a cloned backup, etc.
 
Fishrrman said:
Buy the bare SSD and a USB3 2.5" enclosure (these are cheap)
........
THIS WAY YOU STILL HAVE A WORKING MACBOOK ALL THE WHILE.
........
etc.
Click to expand...
Yup, the steps you outlined are pretty much what I said I was gonna do. :) I've swapped out my hard drive twice before; I don't remember whether I replaced the ribbon cable, but I'm aware of that issue.

I've already got the external SSD set up with Mojave on it, and I've verified that it's behaving itself and leaving my internal drive 100% unmolested while I boot from it. I guess I'll try the Migration Assistant next, when I have several hours to kill.
 
LuisN said:
You can dual boot with Mojave, just create a second partition in HFS+ for your other version of macos and install
Click to expand...

Sadly Apple with thier APFS, if you have that as the primary partition on a disk, even if you have an HFS+ partition after it, it can't be seen with the boot select option. Don't know why.

Yes, A second drive is an option and move the Yosemite install (HFS+) onto it's own drive and then you can boot to that. For me, I came to the conclusion that a VM Fusion was far easier to work with. Once I figured out how to get fusion 11.5 to play nice with the screen resolution on El-Cap, I went that route.


I ended up taking the same route as Adam, in I got an SSD drive and plugged it in external and formatted it with the APFS. What I did differently was split the drive into two partitions to separate the user data from the OS. I figured this way it would make it far easier to backup more frequently the data side without the overhead of copying the OS that changes not all that much. Also if and when I upgrade the OS, the user data will be untouched.
 
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