I cannot reinstall MacOS on Mac mini, when 2 minutes are left before the installation is completed, the system gives an error: Disk is not convertible to APFS
The same error occurs with external hard disk drives
How can I solve this problem? Thanks!
PS: I don't have a backup due to the fact that I want a clean OS
Mac mini, macOS 11.0
1) I created a USB installer from Catalina OS using this instruction https://support.apple.com/ru-ru/HT201372
2) I boot with Option
3) I erase the disk in APFS format eith GUID partition table
4) I choose re-install macOS and see Mojave there
What am I doing wrong? There must be Catalina!
It appears that you have erased your drive completely, before allowing booting from an external drive.
In this situation you will need to install using Internet Recovery. It will be slow.
If the drive is now empty, you should go into Disk Utility, select the whole drive (not just a volume, the drive itself; you may need to click View and make sure that Show All Devices is checked). Erase as APFS with GUID partition table.
Choose any name you like, then click Erase.
Quit Disk Utility and start the installation.
When you do so, the available possibilities are the current OS or the OS that originally shipped with your mac. I am guessing that is why you got Mojave before.
Complete the installation. Boot from the system just installed. Check whether or not the drive is now APFS (it should be).
Make sure that your account is an administrator.
Restart from Recovery (it should be faster now, as it will use the Recovery partition in your drive), go to Startup Security and enable booting from an external drive.
Make a bootable installer on a usb thumb drive. Boot from this installer disk by holding down the Option key when you start your mac. Before proceeding with the installation erase the internal drive as APFS eith GUID partition table.
“reinstall “?
Are you sure you booted from the usb installer disk and not from the recovery partition?
Option key on startup; when the options for booting appear on screen choose the usb drive; using disk utility erase the whole internal drive (not just individual volumes); quit disk Utility and install. The word “reinstall” should not appear here. I cannot see any other way it might appear unless when booting from recovery. This might install Mojave if it was the original system this mac came with.
I cannot boot from an external drive, and I cannot change this setting, when I try to enable this I get the error: no administrators was found
I tried to run the install directly from / volumes / <USB Name> / Install \ macOS \ Catalina.app/Contents/MacOS/InstallAssistant, but I need to enter my admin password :)
Any ideas how to overcome this?
Are you saying that you ran Startup Security Utility (which can only be run from the Recovery partition), tried to enable booting from an external drive and it said there was no administrator account? That’s weird. Can you boot into Mojave and check if your account has admin privileges?
I tried this, completely erasing the disk, when installing mojave or catalina two minutes before the end of the installation, an error appears in the installer log: Disk is not convertible to APFS and the computer restarts.
nzoo wrote:
I tried this, completely erasing the disk, when installing mojave or catalina two minutes before the end of the installation, an error appears in the installer log: Disk is not convertible to APFS and the computer restarts.
Weird!!!... if the drive had already been erased and formatted as APFS...
This is a bug in the motherboard, I gave the mac for repair, thanks for your participation.
Thanks for the answer! Is this any different from the disk utility I use in the command + R "process"?
nzoo wrote:
Thanks for the answer! Is this any different from the disk utility I use in the command + R "process"?
Try it and see— report back you findings.
Yes!
My SSD is clean, no OS is installed on it, I do not understand what kind of administrator we are talking about.
Yes, weird!
How else can this be done?
Disk is not convertible to APFS
