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I will try this sometime today and let you know. As far as the PDF, I was given the choice to add to iCloud drive or download. I don't use iCloud so I just picked d/l. Worked like a champ!

It's still worth your while to run Disk Repair before you try the other steps. At any rate, it can't hurt.

DR sometimes doesn't do the whole job in one shot, so if it runs and still returns an error, rerun it n times until it comes up clean.

What is Disk repair? Do you mean first aid on Disk Utility?

That's it. (I think it used to be called Repair Disk, anyhow.)

I ran it recently with no errors. It runs very, very fast and never any errors. In my older macs it took awhile and always found something to fix. I really don't know if I trust the new one as it always says everything is hunky dory even when I have problems.

OK, followed new instructions and unmounted the two partitions. Did III-B, C and D again but for "E", apply button is still grayed out!!

Just to be certain, you ran it on the INternal drive while booted into the EXternal drive.

This-all doesn't make any sense!

Let's see if joemike's next steps work. We crossed in the mail.

I did. I booted into the external drive and never came out. Used D/U while in external drive and followed instructions regarding Internal drive on D/U. I am still using the external drive as I type this.

I dunno! As I said, this doesn't make any sense.

You're trying to do something I"ve done multiple times with no issues, and I"ve got no more guesses to make about why you can't do it. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Maybe because it's me? Also, don't forget things are wonky on my Mac. Spotlight Search doesn't work and can't get "All my Files" on Finder without a workaround.

OK. Here's an example of where someone says something and thinks I can read between the lines. I went back and looked at Disk Utility and saw the 3 partitions. I had clicked on the partitions like I was told to but no one said to actually click on the minus signs! I was told to click on the partitions one at a time and then click "apply". So, just now I clicked on the minus signs and now I can click apply! I am going to see what else I can do now.

So, I redid some steps and clicked the minus signs and clicked apply. It did it's thing and then said it failed. This is what my D/U shows now: https://imgur.com/0PgM5Ue

I can click erase now though but will wait upon further instructions since something failed. I don't want to make this worse than it is.

OK. So, I redid some steps and clicked the minus signs and clicked apply. It did it's thing and then said it failed. This is what my D/U shows now: https://imgur.com/0PgM5Ue

I can click erase now though but will wait upon further instructions since something failed. I don't want to make this worse than it is.

Update: I redid some of the steps and then it took, so now I am ready to erase my HD. My question is this: Since my HD says it has 121.33 gb of space, does it mean that Sierra is still on it? If so, why do I erase since the other two partitions are not showing anymore? Or is it already erased, so then why erase? Silly questions if you know the answer, but I don't. I am ready to erase and then port back my Sierra 2015 from my ext drive, just wondering about this first.

To JoeMike:

I don't know if you saw my previous posts today as I was trying to follow all your instructions, but.....When I got back to my Mac this evening, my external drive had fallen off (not the first time) and I thought, "Oh no, I have to go back and redo stuff." I was out of my external drive mode, so I checked Disk Utility and it has 27.71 gigs used which I am assuming is mostly Safari. The rest is free space because my Mojave and Catalina partitions are gone after following directions! Yay! So, even though I didn't erase anything, they are gone. So, why can't I just upgrade to Catalina without erasing stuff and/or transferring Sierra 2015 from the external drive to my internal drive. That's all a moot point now, right? Hard Drive after all that work!

That's a valid question, and one that most folks assume will go well if they just go forward with the existing stuff on their hard drive and install the new system over what's there instead of doing the full erase.....truthfully, it MIGHT be OK.

The reason that you would want to erase the hard drive next is pretty basic.......you want a pristine, clean slate with no hidden legacy issues remaining to potentially affect the installation. Erasing the hard drive assures that.....installing over the existing hard drive does not.

Hope this helps make the process easier for you.

We're all rooting for you!

The amount of space used on the drive is immaterial. The object is to make the entire 120GB on your internal drive available for Catalina. My apologies for missing clicking on the minus sign. Please go ahead and erase the internal drive and continue with the instructions to clone Sierra to the internal drive and then upgrade to Catalina.

Rita the amount used is immaterial, the critical number is the amount of free space available in the partition and we are shooting for 120GB, (ie. the entire drive). Additionally, there is no way of knowing what all you deleted and that system was/is flaky as 🤬, so it is vastly preferable to get back to the full working system, which you have on your external drive, as the basis for the Catalina upgrade. You don't want to upgrade problems that may not go away in the upgrade.

All considered, maybe Rita will be best off doing a clean install on her internal and using Migration Assistant to import her settings, apps, and docs from her external?

I forgot that maybe the wonky actions of what I have now would maybe go into my upgrade. So, after my shower, I will start with erasing the HD and go from there. Thank you for clearing that up.

Catalina is now downloading as we speak. It says it's going to take 16 hours!!! I hope not, but I don't have a very fast internet, so maybe. It's only running at .63 mb/sec right now. The highest is a little over 1 mb/sec. I will obviously be on my older Mac this afternoon and evening!

When I installed Big Sur it threatened that it was going to take 30 hours to download (and I have a VERY fast internet connection). Imagine my pleasure when sn hour later I was prompted to log on to Big Sur 😀 Surely Apple doesn't do that intentionally 😳

.63Mbps! Who is your ISP? That sounds suspiciously as if they may be throttling large downloads.

I thought of that, and it had great appeal. If I were performing the process, it is the way I would go. But Rita is performing the process. The migration Assistant added more steps, and each was an opportunity for error in the instructions or their execution.

I considered doing the entire process from the internet Recovery Drive, but after reading the maybe's in Apple's instructions that applied specifically to Sierra, I did not want to deal with multiple alternatives. Again, if I were doing it, I would have worked primarily from the Internet Recovery Drive, but I was not going to be the executor.

I was striving to make the entire process to be as clean and straight forward as possible with minimal to no room for error, and in the end, have working versions of both Catalina and Sierra (just in case).

That is my rationale and I am sticking to it. 👴🏻

Now it says 13 hours. So there is hope!

Glad you stuck to your guns. I need simple!

Okay here is another document to look at that may help explain the difference between partitions and volumes in APFS.