Switching my hard drive from Mac OS journaled to apfs

Boot into Internet Recovery Mode using Command + Option + R which should boot to the Big Sur online installer.

Launch Disk Utility and click "View" and select "Show All Devices" so that the physical drive appears on the left pane of Disk Utility. Select the physical drive which should be called something like "Apple SSD ...." and erase it as GUID partition and APFS (top option). Quit Disk Utility and select "Install macOS'.

Once the install is complete Setup Assistant will automatically run to setup the new OS. One of the options is to migrate from a TM backup. This should save you a few steps.

Moe777moe wrote:

So I currently have a mid 2017 MacBook Pro which is running on Mac OS Catalina and I want to switch the hard drive to apfs I have a back up of my computer also from Catalina and Mac OS journaled. I tried to erase and format to apfs from recovery mode but I got a file with a question mark after I tried to boot it up again (because my laptop can’t figure out which drive to start up on I guess) so after I thought I should use my time machine back up to get my hard drive recognized but sadly it reverted everything back which now that I’m thinking isn’t a surprise. Does anyone know how to fix my issue and get my drive to be apfs because I want to download the Mac OS big sur update as well thank you any advice is welcomed

so I don’t know if it will revert it back to those if I back up after I erase and format to apfs

Should of inquired about this prior to your attempts—

Apple makes this easy and trouble free, done on the fly in about 3 minutes from DiskUtility>Edit>Convert to APFS

Sounds like you are on your way now.

leroydouglas wrote:

Should of inquired about this prior to your attempts—

Apple makes this easy and trouble free, done on the fly in about 3 minutes from DiskUtility>Edit>Convert to APFS

I thought of that, but the OP was questioning which volume to select and since the OP had just gone through the process I figured it was easier to just erase everything just to be safe. Plus when I recommended that option before users mentioned it would not work.

HWTech wrote:

leroydouglas wrote:

Should of inquired about this prior to your attempts—

Apple makes this easy and trouble free, done on the fly in about 3 minutes from DiskUtility>Edit>Convert to APFS

I thought of that, but the OP was questioning which volume to select and since the OP had just gone through the process I figured it was easier to just erase everything just to be safe. Plus when I recommended that option before users mentioned it would not work.

Yep, done fell down the rabbit hole...

The "Convert to APFS" worked for me flawlessly way back whenever the transition was happening, maybe it was only 2 minutes to convert— hard to remember that far back...