Upgrading to High Sierra Concerns/Questions

[skygremlin]

I have a MBP running El Cap that I’d like to upgrade to High Sierra but have a couple concerns first.

The MBP has a 1 TB SSD as my main drive, and a 2 TB SSD drive in the CD Drive bay. This is where I store all my music, photos, really everything I NEED to save (All family and baby photos). I bought a 6 TB last weekend and ran a full TM backup. My thinking was/is, this will be my current backup (of El Cap), then be used moving forward (Backing up my High Sierra OS).

I have done a few previous OS upgrades (over the top) including the El Cap, so this time I am going to erase the main drive and install from scratch (already created the USB Boot and install drive). As to why the upgrade, I have some flakey issues happening which prompted this whole process.

Concerns:
1. If I install from scratch and reconnect the current 6TB TM External USB Drive, will the TM in High Sierra want to reformat that to use it? Or will it be seen as a Time Machine drive and still be used?

2. If something happens when converting the Secondary drive to APFS can I go back to OS X Extended Journaled and restore from the 6TB Backup? I’m assuming this shouldn’t be an issue, just checking.


thanx all

 

[kohlson]

I still regret updating to HS. The issue is for my 2013 MBP with GT750M running a 4K display. Driver support is, shall we say, sub-optimal. As in it's awful. There's a separate thread on this in MR. That said, it sounds like you have other issues with your system, so updating may be a better choice than not.

If I understand APFS correctly, it will only format your system's SSD. Externally-connected HDDs won't be reformatted, and should continue to function as a TM disk.

 

[skygremlin]

Thanx - Yeah I'm finding that out too the more research I'm doing..

My issue is the WiFi NIC went out.. It either won't connect, to flat out says its off/not available... I don't have the exact error messages, but "it doesn't work" lol.. Which is why I was hoping a clean OS install would help.. I'm trying to put HS on a USB drive now... First attempt failed... Trying again...

My MBP is mainly used for work... Networking (IT) running VMFusion for my Cisco Collaboration labs and Photography (Hopefully again soon).. I just need it to work...

As a side note, I bought my first Apple laptop almost 15 years ago, and I don't remember ever having issues (at least none that weren't self administered.. like what we're seeing now. I'm glad Apple exploded as a company, I wish we'd get back to first "Just make it work" then go and do all your fun social stuff...