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Disk is not convertible to APFS

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

Posted on Nov 4, 2020 11:29 PM

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13 replies

Nov 8, 2020 7:06 AM in response to nzoo

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.


Nov 7, 2020 2:54 PM in response to nzoo

“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.

Nov 8, 2020 5:29 AM in response to Luis Sequeira1

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?

Disk is not convertible to APFS

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