Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference to kick off June 10 at 10 a.m. PDT with Keynote address

The Keynote will be available to stream on apple.com, the Apple Developer app, the Apple TV app, and the Apple YouTube channel. On-demand playback will be available after the conclusion of the stream.

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SparkyzFan Author

Level 1

8 points

APFS and El Capitan

After replacing a failing hard drive in my Mac Mini (late 2012) with an ssd drive I decided to update from El Capitan to Catalina. Baaaadddddd mistake. Many programs I depend on wont work.... I tried to restore from backup and go back to El Capitan and got the message about HFS+ not being able to restore to APFS drive. While trying to erase the SSD drive with intentions of changing it to HFS+ file system there were no options to do so. All options were APFS. There was a button in the lower left corner that said something about pooling or grouping and I pressed it out of desperation and the structure of the drive changed from 2 volumes to only one and the drive erased. I pressed erase again to see if I could format and either get my other structure back or format to the HFS+. Still no option for anything except APFS. I went ahead and formatted again just for grins... HOWEVER, now I was able to restore from my HFS+ backup onto my new hard drive which went with no problems. I have El Capitan running on my new SSD drive. I am attaching drive info for you to see.

My question... Is this OK??? What was that button that I probably should not have pushed but did any way? I don't usually go pressing things until I know what they are. I searched the web and found no info about this mysterious button that seemed to resolve my issue. Any help/advise would be appreciated. thanx, SparkyzFan

Mac mini, macOS 10.15

Posted on Nov 29, 2019 7:47 AM

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QuickPost

Level 10

103,329 points

Posted on Nov 29, 2019 8:07 AM

Hello,

If you need to revert to a previous version of the Macintosh system software then you will need to prepare an installer disk and boot from it. From there you can safely reformat your Mac's internal disk to HFS+.

How to create a bootable installer for macOS - Apple Support

Erase and reformat a storage device in Disk Utility on Mac - Apple Support

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Best reply

QuickPost

Level 10

103,329 points

Nov 29, 2019 8:07 AM in response to SparkyzFan

Hello,

How to create a bootable installer for macOS - Apple Support

Erase and reformat a storage device in Disk Utility on Mac - Apple Support

SparkyzFan Author

Level 1

8 points

Nov 29, 2019 8:14 AM in response to QuickPost

THanx, I just realized I could get another download of El Capitan to make an installer. I did not realize I could download El Capitan again. So, I should make a usb installer with El Capitan, Erase my hard drive, install El Capitan then use migration assistant to restore from backup?

SparkyzFan Author

Level 1

8 points

Dec 2, 2019 8:35 AM in response to QuickPost

I made the ElCapitan bootable installer on a USB But got a message about "no packages" when trying to install. remade installer, same error. Saw on internet (many different posts) about changing date in terminal, but, my date and time were already correct but I changed it anyway to the "same" time. Still no luck installing ElCapitan. I tried installing ElCapitan on an external drive using just the install program without usb installer, still same message about "no packages". Don't spend any extra time trying to figure it out, but, any hints that leap to mind would be appreciated. Instead of a clean install I restored from my backup, but, would like to have a way to clean install ElCapitan just in case.