I have a 15" macbook pro 2013 with OS Sierra - I cant upgrade - I keep getting the following error "You may not install to this volume because it has legacy filevault users" What does this mean and how can i remove to allow me to install the latest OS?
MacBook
Filevault is a security encryption process to protect your data in case your laptop is lost or stolen. The original Filevault just encrypted the individual user accounts/folders which resulted in .sparsebundle files in the "/Users" folder. With later versions of macOS Filevault changed to encrypting the whole boot volume which also includes the macOS system files. Now more recent versions of macOS no longer support the original Filevault which only encrypted individual user accounts/folders.
You can try to decrypt those old Filevault user accounts by disabling the legacy Filevault encryption. I don't know if you can do this from the Filevault portion of the Security System Prefenences pane or not. Check there first. You can also try checking the Users pane of System Preferences to see if it is possible to decrypt the user from there.
If you cannot disable the legacy Filevault users, then you may need to backup those user accounts and then delete them before being allowed to upgrade macOS.
I highly recommend you have good verified working backups before doing anything in case something goes wrong. You should always have regular system backups.
Filevault is a security encryption process to protect your data in case your laptop is lost or stolen. The original Filevault just encrypted the individual user accounts/folders which resulted in .sparsebundle files in the "/Users" folder. With later versions of macOS Filevault changed to encrypting the whole boot volume which also includes the macOS system files. Now more recent versions of macOS no longer support the original Filevault which only encrypted individual user accounts/folders.
You can try to decrypt those old Filevault user accounts by disabling the legacy Filevault encryption. I don't know if you can do this from the Filevault portion of the Security System Prefenences pane or not. Check there first. You can also try checking the Users pane of System Preferences to see if it is possible to decrypt the user from there.
If you cannot disable the legacy Filevault users, then you may need to backup those user accounts and then delete them before being allowed to upgrade macOS.
I highly recommend you have good verified working backups before doing anything in case something goes wrong. You should always have regular system backups.
Hi - Many thanks for your solution... It was indeed the 'old user accounts' I deleted them and macOS Catalina installed no problems... (however, got a few issues with my old MSoffice, but it needs updating anyway) Once again, many thanks for your help. Brilliant!
I'm glad you were successful and you are most welcome.
I have a 15" macbook pro 2013 with OS Sierra - I cant upgrade
