This volume is not formatted as APFS

Mojave drives are supposed to be APFS, so Catalina is expecting it to be APFS.

I know through testing that it is possible to clone a Mojave partition on top of a HFS+ partition. Perhaps you may have previously done that.

Clone your Mojave to an external drive. Reformat your internal as a APFS drive, something that should have happened when you first installed Mojave. Then you can boot from your clone and clone it back to your internal drive. Then boot Mojave from your internal and upgrade to Catalina.

I encountered this issue on my mid-2014 MBP Retina 15". Over the years, I've upgraded through each OS sequentially, including Mojave.

However, I know exactly how I got to this point. About a week ago, I replaced a failing SSD (wear leveling had reached its limit). Before restoring, I formatted the new SSD as Mac OS Extended (Journaled), not realizing that Mojave was using a new FS.

So, apparently, I face the prospect of reformatting/restoring once again, which is somewhat of a PITA, plus which the restore took half a day because I was restoring from a backup image on my home network's NAS. I'll do that if I have to, if there's no workaround...?

After speaking with Apple, I attempted to erase the drive from Restore (shut down then command+R upon restart) so I could then restore the data from Time Machine backup. BUT, when I got to the formatting options, there was no APFS option visible via disk utility. You might see the APFS formatting option on your Mac and so you can ignore the rest of this saga.

What I then did was reinstall (from recovery mode) the OS. For my Mac it was Sierra. Once I had a clean install of Sierra I went to Software Update to get a copy of Mojave. I downloaded it and installed - checking to make sure this time Mojave had converted to APFS (It had ). Then I returned to Software Update and downloaded Catalina. Once I tried to install was given a new error that the download was corrupted.

Lastly I went to the Apple site and downloaded Catalina directly. Finally it installed correctly.

Yes, it was a complete clusterf**k. But those are the hoops.

Apple *should* fix this problem, since they allowed it to occur. The problem evidently arose from the initial beta upgrade to High Sierra (or Mojave?) which required the user to manually select an upgrade to the APFS format. I, and apparently many other users, did not do this; I did not understand the ramifications of this at the time. Now we are stuck with Mojave (10.14.3) that cannot be further upgraded without completely erasing and reformatting the drive and copying it back from a backup. Even Disk Utility from Recovery Mode does not allow an upgrade to the APFS format (it is greyed out).

Call me an idiot for getting into this mess -- but Apple should have made this idiot proof!

So i have an iMac with an internal 5400rpm IDE drive, formatted MacOS Journaled extended, which has Mojave 10.14 and i tried to install Catalina last night and got the message that the drive is not APFS so i can't install.

From what i've read, Mojave should already be APFS but there are some circumstances where you can end up with Mojave journaled extended instead. Is there a way to convert to APFS *without* wiping the drive, or do i have to do the Recovery Mode, use Disk Utility to erase and format the drive as APFS (is there a guarantee that APFS will not be greyed out in Disk Utility?), then choose the Install new MacOS. And at that point, which version of MacOS will it choose to install? Does it just download it from Apple and install it? I assume that it would get the latest version which would be Catalina.

It's all a bit confusing, so i'm going to hold off for a while until i get some answers.

Thanks.

Danny in Sydney.

I hope we can find a solution to this problem that doesn't involve a bunch of coding jargon and a confusing number of steps (such is the way of the Mac *sigh*). I reeeeaaaallyy need to use iMovie and it won't let me until I update.

yeah... none of the proposed solutions worked, Apple is not giving any response so I bit the bullet and made a full backup with rsync, rebooter with cmd-R formatted my drive with the Disk Utility to APFS installed macOS (Mojave) and booted normally restored everything with rsync again and upgraded afterwards to Catalina...

...aaand discovered I couldn't connect to my NAS anymore. Probably due to the removal of smb v1.0 support, fixed it for now by putting a raspberry pi between the nas and Mac but ~sighs~ this is not the "it just works" Apple as it always has been.

And frankly after a few hours... I'm rather underwhelmed by Catalina

When Mojave was installed it would have automatically updated your boot drive to APFS unless you told it not to. However, you should be able to convert your boot volume to APFS without destroying your data. Launch Disk Utility, select the volume (not the drive itself), then right-click and select Convert to APFS.

Be sure to back up your boot volume before doing anything in case something goes wrong.

After several hours of Apple Support Chat two days ago, one of the support reps finally told me that the reason I couldn't reformat my drive (Samsung 860 EVO 1 TB) to APFS was because it wasn't a Macintosh drive. Really? I've invested a great deal of time in trying to upgrade to Catalina, having several Support interactions with multiple Apple Support personnel, only to find out, oh, btw, it won't work because it isn't our drive? I haven't found this anywhere as an official position, so all I have to go on is this one Tech. No idea if it is correct or not.

My process was... while my original Macintosh HDD was internal in my Mid 2012 MacBook Pro, I upgraded to Mojave. I then cloned that drive to the new Samsung 860 EVO 1 TB SSD drive, then installed the SSD as the internal drive. It ran Mojave just fine having been cloned onto the drive. But now it won't upgrade because it wasn't formatted to APFS, and at the time there was no info to state that it needed to be in APFS format. When I tried erasing the Samsung drive to reformat as APFS, there was no option to select APFS... and the reason I've been given is that it isn't a Macintosh drive.

Presumably I could reinstall the Macintosh HDD and upgrade to Catalina then start the process all over again, but that seems absurd. My question to the Apple Support tech was, "So does this mean I'll never be able to update my software again?" And the answer was "Yes".

I was also told that I should have checked to see if the new hardware was compatible. Hardware I purchased 5 months ago compatible with software that hadn't yet been released and that Apple still doesn't want to admit won't install on anything other than their hardware? The Tech did do a quick search and was able to verify that there was no published Apple info stating that there was any incompatibility issue.

I paid $100 for the Samsung drive. Currently, going to a 1 TB SSD upgrade on the new MacBook Pros from a 256 GB SSD costs $400. Yep, I can see why they want to keep this on their hardware only. Of course with the newer models, upgrading hardware isn't even an option.

I love my MacBook and never want to have to go back to another type of machine... but this sort of philosophy that punishes customers for being loyal to Apple is getting old.

In my eprsonal situation, I set up an external USB SSD drive, by following a procedure someone posted. It did not mention that you needed to first format the new drive as APFS. THe procedure I posted above will work, only if you have access to a second hard drive.

What I would suggest is get Carbon Copy and clone to an external drive that has been formatted as APFS. Then, upgrade the external drive to Catalina. Then, again use Carbon Copy to clone the external disk to the internal disk.

You want to make sure the external disk can boot, when you do the first clone. And, can be booted after you do the upgrade.

My external disk is a hhttps://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B078STRHBX/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o05_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1.

A SanDisk 1TB Extreme Portable External SSD - Up to 550MB/s - USB-C, USB 3.1 - SDSSDE60-1T00-G25. Certainly not an Apple SSD. It screams on a USB 3.0 port, as opposed to the standrd 5400 Apple provided 5400 RPM SATA disk.

This si now used as my system disk. The internal drive can be booted and used in the event of an emergency. Thsi morning I cloned my external drive to the inetrnal drive, so I did not have to do a second upgrade to Catalina.

Doesn't work... thats is what all the people are talking about.

Only option is full file backup ( i used rsync ) format and fresh install of mojave, restoring ( rsync again ) and then upgrade to Catalina ...takes a few hours but it works.

Several times it happened to me that the recovery failed and I had to restore the data manually from the cloud. It is very annoying and risky to format the disc and consciously expose myself to the risk of losing much time. With upgrading to Catalina, I have to wait until I have enough time to do it. I need a computer to make money. I can't afford to risk staying a week without a working system :-(

HWTech wrote:

Did you try erasing the whole physical drive? In order to see the physical drive in Disk Utility you need to click on "View" and select "Show all devices". You should then be able to select the physical drive in the left pane of Disk Utility to erase the drive as GUID partition and APFS (top option).

Yes, it was still "greyed out". But the Samsung SSD is currently installed as my internal drive. Would this make a difference?

HWTech wrote:

Maybe your system firmware was never fully updated so macOS is blocking you from using APFS.

I'm not sure I follow... firmware to the Samsung SSD?

Your comments have been helpful... thank you!

bj3john4 wrote:

HWTech wrote:

Did you try erasing the whole physical drive? In order to see the physical drive in Disk Utility you need to click on "View" and select "Show all devices". You should then be able to select the physical drive in the left pane of Disk Utility to erase the drive as GUID partition and APFS (top option).

Yes, it was still "greyed out". But the Samsung SSD is currently installed as my internal drive. Would this make a difference?

Is this a traditional 2.5" SATA SSD?

HWTech wrote:

Maybe your system firmware was never fully updated so macOS is blocking you from using APFS.

I'm not sure I follow... firmware to the Samsung SSD?

Your comments have been helpful... thank you!

I mean the computer's firmware. Recent versions of macOS are supposed to install new firmware onto the computer as part of the upgrade process, but sometimes this process is skipped. Without the updated firmware the computer may not be able to use APFS on the boot drive. Unfortunately Apple no longer lists the most recent firmware revisions for each product.

What is the exact model of your computer? You can get this information by entering your serial number here or here.