Has anyone using TARDISK been successful updating into MOJAVE?
Hello Jim,
Yes to following the instructions. Here is what I did. I backed up anything that needed to be backed up and un-peared my Tardisk and then re-formated it to HFS+ and named it TarDisk. (Then run FSCK if you feel the need). I then installed Mojave and got it up and running. (You do not have to do this first if you don't want to) Once it was up and running, I backed it up to a portable drive as my time machine backup. I then followed the steps on the Pear_TarDisk_Mojave.pdf.
Note: While you do copy the Sierra installer to a USB stick, you do not actually install Sierra. It is merely to change the structure of the file system back to HFS+ when Mojave has changed it to APFS. Once that is done, you go then restore your time machine backup of Mojave and everything works great. About the PDF...let me know how and I will send it to you.
Tp
I have written or tweeted to all of these. Very angry, especially since TarDisk is still actively selling. After multiple attempts to reach them via Twitter, emails, and their own support desk, I have received only one reply that says they are "still testing."
I completely agree with you. Apple upgraded their hard drives to APFS for a reason downgrading to HFS+ doesn't make since to me. At this point I've reformatted the Tardisk to be just an external drive that happens to be plugged into my computer at all times. I've moved over my photos and am in the process of moving my desktop screen and documents over to the Tardisk as well. This way I can at least get something out of it.
Has anyone found any way to reach the company itself? I have tried every channel I can think of: Twitter, their various email addresses, the "HelpDesk" etc.
After doing some Googling, I have found Pierce Schiller, who, according to LinkedIn, was the CEO from Sept 2014 - June 2018. His email is listed, and I'm writing to him now.
No problem at all. I recommend you read through everything that's been posted here before you begin — there are a few issues with the instructions as given and it's taken us a bit of time to sort them all out. : )
Were you able to upgrade with your Tardisk learned? I don’t want to downgrade my hard drive to HFS+ as it seems that going forward the new APFS will be needed to take advantage of some of the upcoming features. For now I’m just using my Tardisk as an external hard drive that just happens to be plugged into my MacBook. I moved my photo library to it but kept my home folder on the MacBook hard drive. I originally move that over to the Tardisk but I was having a lot of stability issues as it would randomly shut down or wouldn’t shut down or restart.
Hey joneser13 - What exactly are we missing out on with HFS+ now? I tried what you mentioned and the TarDisk is useless as a stand-a-lone storage device. I tried to run my parallel’s Window 10 Pro VM from it and it crashed incessantly and was super slow. Only way this thing works for me is “peared”.
Tp
It seems faster overall for me. If you google what are the differences between the HFS+ and APFS there are a ton of articles. I just prefer to no go backwards on technology when they obviously upgraded to the APFS for a reason. I agree having the Tardisk as a external hard drive is a waste. My photos which is about 35GB is the only thing on the Tardisk now and seems to be working ok. I’m going to but my documents on there next and see how that goes.
Yeah he sent me those instructions a few weeks ago and then said once I did all that to reach out to him with my serial number and he would then send me a link to pear iit. Now I can read and follow instructions so I’m sure I could downgrade to HFS+ and get it up and running but I bought the Tardisk because it’s marketed as a plug and play program which it’s obviously not anymore. The fact that they still continue to market it is frustrating as well.
Yes, this is very confusing. I was successfully running High Sierra with TarDisk. My attempt to upgrade to Mojave failed, I restored with Time Machine and I'm successfully running High Sierra again. But the attempt to install Mojave must have done something, because now I cannot update to new versions of High Sierra.
TarDisk provides no good or easy answer. I trust the people on this thread and have not proceeded with the instructions to fix my Mac that I received from Luis at TarDisk.
Important note- my Mac will not boot as a result of the Mohave install and I have not tried to fix yet. TarDisk took some time to respond to all my questions and I don’t feel confident that “I will have no issues” is true.
TarDisk response was:
- make sure you don’t have more than 80% of your original memory full
- unpear TarDisk
- install Mohave
- pear TarDisk
I reached it to TarDisk to find out if anyone had issues with Mohave once they upgraded and if so what were the issues. After asking three times, the response was there have been no issues with Mohave once this process is completed. I find that hard to believe since no one on this thread seems to have had a successful upgrade or downgrade.
I’m fortunate that I have access to someone Mac right now or I’d be in a world of hurt until I get this fixed.
No, the Mac wont boot, it can’t reach the OS. I could proceed with going to Mohave but have no confidence that TarDisks response of “no issues” is accurate. If they would have been forthcoming and say hey, don’t upgrade yet or be prepared and follow these steps, then I’d trust that I’m not going to have more issues. I’m fortunate that I have until the end of the month before I’m dependent on my laptop so I can hold off and see how things work out for more people before deciding what’s best for me.
I tried the latest security update again, and got the same "can't be installed on this Mac error." After searching for my specific error code, I found some advice here suggesting I use the combo updater to re-install High Sierra 10.13.6. I executed a backup, and did this installation -- and now it seems my machine is back to being able to process OS software updates again. So I'm not sure what this particularly fail did or didn't have to do with my TarDisk situation, but at least I'm back to being able to keep High Sierra current.
Mojave is beyond my level of bravery.
https://support.apple.com/kb/DL1970?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US
Wow, Mike - that sounds like a massive jury rig of a solution, with no guarantee that it will continue to work going forward. What the heck is going on over at TarDisk?
All I can say is I'll be a lot more careful about major third-party upgrades to my hardware going forward. In the end, while it was nice to have a larger "Fusion Drive" SSD in my machine, the headaches that resulted were a real hassle and my Mac's running a lot more smoothly with the TarDisk just as a plain, old SDHC card/second drive. An expensive one, to be sure, but it does have that nice casing around it that matches the rest of my MacBook Pro!
That's all well and good, I suppose, but there is the fact that there's no support from Apple for a homebrew Fusion drive of this nature, as well as no support from TarDisk. If things go "Pear-shaped" and sideways, you're on your own for solutions.
I did discover that Time Machine will include a chip in the SD slot when backing up your computer, assuming you haven't gone to the trouble of excluding it. On the whole, it's not as seamless as a single, virtual drive, but the reduction of the number of hassles is, for me, worth it. Your mileage may vary.
Thanks for the info. I just want to clarify. Are you able to use the tardisk and SSD as a fusion drive formatted in APFS? A number of us have it going well with HFS. The way the guy from Tardisk got it working was via terminal as well, so I'm just wondering if you have it all going with APFS.
Thanks.
Tp
TarDisk and Mojave
