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i cannot install catalina - change volume to apfs

i cannot install catalina because my harddisk volume is not formatted in APFS but macos extended - how can i transform my harddisk volume to apfs without loosing everything ?


i have mojave 10.14.3 installed

MacBook Pro 13", macOS 10.14

Posted on Nov 2, 2019 9:26 AM

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Posted on Nov 7, 2019 8:13 AM

hmmm - didn t work out


but here s how i could work around :

i had the choice to install catalina on my back-up drive (back-up made with carbon copy cloner - bootable clone)

that went fine


after that i asked ccc to restore the hard-disk

ccc asked to transform computer hard disk to APFS

and after that restored all data with catalina


hope this helps other who have the same issue

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Nov 7, 2019 8:13 AM in response to Barney-15E

hmmm - didn t work out


but here s how i could work around :

i had the choice to install catalina on my back-up drive (back-up made with carbon copy cloner - bootable clone)

that went fine


after that i asked ccc to restore the hard-disk

ccc asked to transform computer hard disk to APFS

and after that restored all data with catalina


hope this helps other who have the same issue

Dec 1, 2019 6:39 PM in response to jovh

Strange that the Convert step through Disk Utility didn't work out. Do you have a Fusion drive in your Mac? (1 logical drive with a mix of HDD and SSD.) I remember that those would not auto-convert from HFS+ to APFS and have had some issues, though I don't have one myself.


CCC was a good idea.

Even without the CCC prompt/guide, you could have done the same thing manually.


  • Do a full disk backup to an external disk with CCC or Time Machine
  • From Recovery mode, erase the HFS+ partitions (destructively)
  • Create new APFS partition(s) from scratch, rather than converting in place
  • Restore your files from the external backup


Nov 2, 2019 9:38 AM in response to jovh

Boot into Recovery and open Disk Utility.

Select the startup device and look for a Convert command in the menus.


You will likely need to show all devices by clicking on the View button and select "Show All Devices."

If that command is not available, I'm not sure what to do.

Perhaps reinstalling Mojave will convert it.


i cannot install catalina - change volume to apfs

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