Home Forums Mac Software Mac Operating Systems Ready to do Cataline (tomorrow)

To JoeMike: I am going to paste your last post to me regarding adding Catalina to my Mac. I will interject in green. I haven't done any of the real actions yet, but I did go through step-by-step and look at some things which gave me some questions.


Given you have a bootable copy of Sierra on your external drive we can shortcut the process.
PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE DO NOT GET AHEAD OF ME.

FOLLOW EACH AND EVERY ONE OF THE FOLLOWING STEPS IN EXACT SEQUENCE
I BOOT FROM THE EXTERNAL CLONE
1 Attach your external drive to your computer
2 While booted from the internal drive on your computer,
3 Verify you have SuperDuper installed on the external drive I do
4 if possible verify the missing files are on the external drive They are
5 go to System Preferences > Startup Disk
6 Select the Sierra 2015 as the boot drive
7 Click on Restart (When this completes you should be booted from Sierra on the external drive)
II PREPARE THE INTERNAL DRIVE
1 Open Disk Utility
2 in the Disk Utility sidebar, select the internal drive DRIVE (Be sure you select the physical drive not one of the paartitions on the drive) I am assuming you mean click on the drive called Apple SSD because below that and indented is Mac HD and then Mojave and Catalina.

3 On the Disk Utility tool bar select Erase (It's grayed out) then Name: Macintosh HD, Format Mac OS Extended (Journaled), Scheme: GUID Partition Map
4 Click Erase (again?)(This will effectively erase all content on your internal drive and all partitions) (Again, it's grayed out)
III CLONE SIERRA BACK TO THE INTERNAL DRIVE
• I don't have SuperDuper as an exemplar but I believe you know how to use it correctly. Your target drive is labeled Macintosh HD (I don't know how to do this. Can I skip this step? I probably won't be using Sierra again anyway except on my older mac.)
IV BOOT FROM THE INTERNAL DRIVE
1 While booted from the external drive go to System Preferences > Startup Disk
2 Select Macintosh HD as the boot drive (You mean Apple SSD which is above the Mac HD in the list?)
3 Click on Restart (when this completes you should be running Sierra from the internal drive on your computer and have a full 120GB available storage)
4 If your missing files were on the eternal drive they will now e on your internal drive. If not, you should have had a backup system like Time Machine running regularly.
V IF YOU WISH TO UPGRADE TO CATALINA
1 Open App Store
2 Search for Catalina
3 Click on Get
4 Follow the on-screen instructions.
5 Your computer screen will go blank several times and there will be excruciatingly long pauses but after 45 minutes or so...
6 You will be prompted for your logon password and you will be running Catalina
a There will be a new folder on your desktop that you can ignore
b Your internal drive will have been converted to APFS and there will be four APFS volumes on your internal drive (all showing a capacity of 120GB -- I will explain what is going on if you are interested)
c As time goes on, you will find you need to approve all sorts of things as part of Catalina's increased security precautions
d You will need to immediately update OnyX, SuperSuper, and probably a few other applications.
e You will have entered the 21st century of Apple computing
f If you switch to Carbon Copy Cloner you can turn on APFS Snapshots which will provide some limited protection against inadvertent file loss. (I tried CCC in the past and found it confusing, so I will stick with SuperDuper.)

If there are any major steps I can avoid because I am not going to use Sierra, let me know. Thanks for all your time, JoeMike. I appreciate it.

Okay I will comment in BLUE. Please bear with me as I am dictating rather than typing. My left hand is in a sling and bandaged after surgery Wednesday. So I will keep my remarks brief.
My goals are:

• to get rid of the partitions on your internal drive
• to be sure you have a valid copy of your data
• to reduce the possibility of error to a minimum
• to end up with a clean copy of your existing OS on the internal drive ready for upgrade

To accomplish all of this with surety requires some extra steps. I believe they are worth it to be sure it was done right.


Given you have a bootable copy of Sierra on your external drive we can shortcut the process.
PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE DO NOT GET AHEAD OF ME.

FOLLOW EACH AND EVERY ONE OF THE FOLLOWING STEPS IN EXACT SEQUENCE
I BOOT FROM THE EXTERNAL CLONE
1 Attach your external drive to your computer
2 While booted from the internal drive on your computer,
3 Verify you have SuperDuper installed on the external drive I do just checking
4 if possible verify the missing files are on the external drive They are good
5 go to System Preferences > Startup Disk
6 Select the Sierra 2015 as the boot drive
7 Click on Restart (When this completes you should be booted from Sierra on the external drive)
II PREPARE THE INTERNAL DRIVE
1 Open Disk Utility
2 in the Disk Utility sidebar, select the internal drive DRIVE (Be sure you select the physical drive not one of the paartitions on the drive) I am assuming you mean click on the drive called Apple SSD because below that and indented is Mac HD and then Mojave and Catalina. was the screenshot unclear? Yes the outented portion.
3 On the Disk Utility tool bar select Erase (It's grayed out) then Name: Macintosh HD, Format Mac OS Extended (Journaled), Scheme: GUID Partition Map
well heckey darn I guess we're gonna have to do it the hard way.

• click on partition
• select the last partition on the drive
• click on the minus sign at the bottom of the list
• click apply
• click done
• repeat for the second partition on the list
• when you get down to only one partition on the drive then you can erase the drive as in the original instructions

4 Click Erase (again?)(This will effectively erase all content on your internal drive and all partitions) (Again, it's grayed out)
III CLONE SIERRA BACK TO THE INTERNAL DRIVE
• I don't have SuperDuper as an exemplar but I believe you know how to use it correctly. Your target drive is labeled Macintosh HD (I don't know how to do this. Can I skip this step? I probably won't be using Sierra again anyway except on my older mac.) there is no consideration for your older Mac in these instructions. However if you do it my way you will retain a copy of Sierra on your external Drive that you could move to if you need it. Have you ever used super Duper? The only thing that is different here you would be selecting the external drive as the source and the internal drive as the target or where you are cloning too.
IV BOOT FROM THE INTERNAL DRIVE
1 While booted from the external drive go to System Preferences > Startup Disk
2 Select Macintosh HD as the boot drive (You mean Apple SSD which is above the Mac HD in the list?)
3 Click on Restart (when this completes you should be running Sierra from the internal drive on your computer and have a full 120GB available storage)
4 If your missing files were on the eternal drive they will now e on your internal drive. If not, you should have had a backup system like Time Machine running regularly.
V IF YOU WISH TO UPGRADE TO CATALINA
1 Open App Store
2 Search for Catalina
3 Click on Get
4 Follow the on-screen instructions.
5 Your computer screen will go blank several times and there will be excruciatingly long pauses but after 45 minutes or so...
6 You will be prompted for your logon password and you will be running Catalina
a There will be a new folder on your desktop that you can ignore
b Your internal drive will have been converted to APFS and there will be four APFS volumes on your internal drive (all showing a capacity of 120GB -- I will explain what is going on if you are interested)
c As time goes on, you will find you need to approve all sorts of things as part of Catalina's increased security precautions
d You will need to immediately update OnyX, SuperSuper, and probably a few other applications.
e You will have entered the 21st century of Apple computing
f If you switch to Carbon Copy Cloner you can turn on APFS Snapshots which will provide some limited protection against inadvertent file loss. (I tried CCC in the past and found it confusing, so I will stick with SuperDuper.) help me understand what you are concerned about in step III if super Duper is so easy

If there are any major steps I can avoid because I am not going to use Sierra, let me know. Thanks for all your time, JoeMike. I appreciate it. [/quote]

[/quote]

Get better, and I will too, and then we can hopefully fix this.

Okay I will comment in BLUE. Please bear with me as I am dictating rather than typing. My left hand is in a sling and bandaged after surgery Wednesday. So I will keep my remarks brief. [color:#993399] You have an owie on your hand, and I have a cold or a sinus infeciton, so this may have to be put off. Anyway.... Now I am using red and I hope your cold rr sinus is just that and not anything more dangerous. I hope you haven't lost your sense of smell or taste
My goals are:

• to get rid of the partitions on your internal drive
• to be sure you have a valid copy of your data
• to reduce the possibility of error to a minimum
• to end up with a clean copy of your existing OS on the internal drive ready for upgrade

To accomplish all of this with surety requires some extra steps. I believe they are worth it to be sure it was done right.
[/color]

Given you have a bootable copy of Sierra on your external drive we can shortcut the process.
PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE DO NOT GET AHEAD OF ME.

FOLLOW EACH AND EVERY ONE OF THE FOLLOWING STEPS IN EXACT SEQUENCE
I BOOT FROM THE EXTERNAL CLONE
1 Attach your external drive to your computer
2 While booted from the internal drive on your computer,
3 Verify you have SuperDuper installed on the external drive I do just checking
4 if possible verify the missing files are on the external drive They are good
5 go to System Preferences > Startup Disk
6 Select the Sierra 2015 as the boot drive
7 Click on Restart (When this completes you should be booted from Sierra on the external drive)
II PREPARE THE INTERNAL DRIVE
1 Open Disk Utility
2 in the Disk Utility sidebar, select the internal drive DRIVE (Be sure you select the physical drive not one of the paartitions on the drive) I am assuming you mean click on the drive called Apple SSD because below that and indented is Mac HD and then Mojave and Catalina. was the screenshot unclear? [color:#CC33CC]Mine says apple SSD so I was making sure. Yes the outented portion.[/color] Not sure what outented means. Typo? outdented is the opposite of indented
3 On the Disk Utility tool bar select Erase (It's grayed out) then Name: Macintosh HD, Format Mac OS Extended (Journaled), Scheme: GUID Partition Map
well heckey darn I guess we're gonna have to do it the hard way.

• click on partition
• select the last partition on the drive
• click on the minus sign at the bottom of the list [color:#993399](I think this is what I did orignially to try to get rid of Mojave and Catalina partitions but I will do it again.)
• click apply
• click done
• repeat for the second partition on the list
• when you get down to only one partition on the drive then you can erase the drive as in the original instructions

[/color]
4 Click Erase (again?)(This will effectively erase all content on your internal drive and all partitions) (Again, it's grayed out)
III CLONE SIERRA BACK TO THE INTERNAL DRIVE
• I don't have SuperDuper as an exemplar but I believe you know how to use it correctly. Your target drive is labeled Macintosh HD (I don't know how to do this. Can I skip this step? I probably won't be using Sierra again anyway except on my older mac.) there is no consideration for your older Mac in these instructions. [color:#993399]I know, I just wanted you to know that I have access to Sierra on my older Mac should I mess something up on my newer Mac while doing this. However if you do it my way you will retain a copy of Sierra on your external Drive that you could move to if you need it. I was trying to say I don't care if I have Sierra on my external drive if it would be easier to do it another way. Have you ever used super Duper? You know I have. That's what I've been talking about. That's how I transferred stuff to my external drive. The only thing that is different here you would be selecting the external drive as the source and the internal drive as the target or where you are cloning too.[/color]
IV BOOT FROM THE INTERNAL DRIVE
1 While booted from the external drive go to System Preferences > Startup Disk
2 Select Macintosh HD as the boot drive (You mean Apple SSD which is above the Mac HD in the list?)
3 Click on Restart (when this completes you should be running Sierra from the internal drive on your computer and have a full 120GB available storage)
4 If your missing files were on the eternal drive they will now e on your internal drive. If not, you should have had a backup system like Time Machine running regularly.
V IF YOU WISH TO UPGRADE TO CATALINA
1 Open App Store
2 Search for Catalina
3 Click on Get
4 Follow the on-screen instructions.
5 Your computer screen will go blank several times and there will be excruciatingly long pauses but after 45 minutes or so...
6 You will be prompted for your logon password and you will be running Catalina
a There will be a new folder on your desktop that you can ignore
b Your internal drive will have been converted to APFS and there will be four APFS volumes on your internal drive (all showing a capacity of 120GB -- I will explain what is going on if you are interested)
c As time goes on, you will find you need to approve all sorts of things as part of Catalina's increased security precautions
d You will need to immediately update OnyX, SuperSuper, and probably a few other applications.
e You will have entered the 21st century of Apple computing
f If you switch to Carbon Copy Cloner you can turn on APFS Snapshots which will provide some limited protection against inadvertent file loss. (I tried CCC in the past and found it confusing, so I will stick with SuperDuper.) help me understand what you are concerned about in step III if super Duper is so easy It's not that it's not easy, it's that I don't know what I am doing half the time. I tried to find a way to send what was on the ext. drive to my internal drive and couldn't see how. I will look again, but I want this to be as simple as possible, leaving out the external drive all together until I download Catalina and then will back it up to SuperDuper after all is said and done. Your partitions on your internal drive make that very difficult maybe even impossible

If there are any major steps I can avoid because I am not going to use Sierra, let me know. Thanks for all your time, JoeMike. I appreciate it. [/quote] [/quote]

Get better, and I will too, and then we can hopefully fix this.

Rita, if you had a more recent operating system than Sierra, and if you did not have all the partitions on your internal drive, and you were more confident of what you are doing, and were willing to risk ending up at some point within non-bootable system, I could eliminate some steps. But you do not have a large enough partition to upgrade Sierra on your internal drive -- there simply isn't enough room. That is why we're going through all these steps. I want you to have a safe uneventful transition. While you can nondestructively remove partitions -- particularly in later versions of macOS — but that doesn't always work and the has a risk of ending up with a non-bootable system. I know there are a lot of steps and you wish you could eliminate some. Personally I can't think of a safe way of making the transition other than what I have outlined. If you are willing to go through with it. If I can get a free copy of Super Duper I will see if I can add specific superduper instructions. At this point I am beginning to wonder if I shouldn't rewrite the entire set of instructions? What do you think? It would mean waiting until I regain the use of my left hand because of all the typing it would require.

SuperDuper! is free as long as you don't want to do incremental backups.

The free version does only erase & clone.


I should have mentioned this long ago, but after one update that folder contained the file with my local passwords. I deleted it without really looking or thinking. Oops!

Best to examine it carefully.

Thanks, JoeMike. I appreciate all you do for me. I am willing to wait if you want to rewrite it. Would it be easier to dictate on the Mac and then just correct the boo-boo's the Mac makes when it misunderstands you? Anyway, I'm in no hurry.

I compared my symptoms to Covid, and I don't believe I have it. Just a chest cold or a slight case of bronchitis. Taste and smell intact. No dry cough. No fever. Whew!







[/quote]

Get better, and I will too, and then we can hopefully fix this.

Rita, if you had a more recent operating system than Sierra, and if you did not have all the partitions on your internal drive, and you were more confident of what you are doing, and were willing to risk ending up at some point within non-bootable system, I could eliminate some steps. But you do not have a large enough partition to upgrade Sierra on your internal drive -- there simply isn't enough room. That is why we're going through all these steps. I want you to have a safe uneventful transition. While you can nondestructively remove partitions -- particularly in later versions of macOS — but that doesn't always work and the has a risk of ending up with a non-bootable system. I know there are a lot of steps and you wish you could eliminate some. Personally I can't think of a safe way of making the transition other than what I have outlined. If you are willing to go through with it. If I can get a free copy of Super Duper I will see if I can add specific superduper instructions. At this point I am beginning to wonder if I shouldn't rewrite the entire set of instructions? What do you think? It would mean waiting until I regain the use of my left hand because of all the typing it would require. [/quote]

Rita,
You have heard of a Bridge too far well Sierra is almost that. If your installed version of Sierra is prior to MacOS 10.12.4, the only way to upgrade is by first upgrading to High Sierra. Even the Network Recovery Drive will only install the OS version that came on you Mac if it is still available. (See MacOS Recover exceptions at the bottom of this Apple Support Document). in working on a a shortcut version I have discovered there are a LOT of ifs which could end up with several alternative paths. Lots of, if this happens go to step IV.1.A.b else go to step III.B caused by unknowns in your Mac configuration, uncertainties in Apple instructions, variations in installed software, etc.. The shortcut instructions are longer than my original set of instructions and will get a LOT longer if I have to contend with multiple potential alternatives. The longer and more complex the instructions get to be the greater the risk of operator error (me or you) and the more steps necessary to prevent such an error.

At this point I would recommend two alternatives…

1. I go back and put a spit shine on my original set of instructions, which avoid most of the uncertainties, and you use those or...
2. You take your computer to a Certified Apple Repair facility and ask them to erase your internal drive and install Catalina They have access to installers and tools I don't have and can't reasonably get.

So what is your choice?

May I make a suggestion at this point?

If Rita is satisfied that she's got a good, current clone of her Sierra (10.12.6) boot drive on her external, why not go for broke and try to delete the extra partitions on her internal?

If the effort is successful, she can upgrade the remaining Sierra to Catalina, and if it fails, she's no worse off than she was.

(I'm at a loss as to why she can't erase her internal while booted into her external. I've done it, and there's no reason I can even begin to guess at why she can't other than that she was inadvertantly booted into her internal when she tried to erase it.)

I choose to try fixing it ourselves because if you or I mess this up, I will have to take it to an Apple place anyway, and I will have to pay money either way. I'd rather take a chance and try it ourselves first. I still hope you will dictate most of it to save your hand or wait until your hand is way better.

Yep, I will go for broke to save a possible trip and money to an Apple store which is an hour away. And are they open yet or still closed because of Covid?

Not sure why everything was grayed out. I originally thought I erased the partitions, but obviously it didn't work. Hopefully, with my new instructions, all will be well. I didn't realize I couldn't upgrade to Catalina from just Sierra according to JoeMike. Though maybe I could upgrade to High Sierra and then go from there? We will see what he has to say.

I looked at Apple Stores last night and found that some are open and some are still closed. Judging from the stores I looked at, I'll guess that store configuration is a, if not THE, major factor.

joemike said "If your installed version of Sierra is prior to MacOS 10.12.4, the only way to upgrade is by first upgrading to High Sierra," but you've got 10.12.6, so it's not an issue.

I think "going for broke" is your best approach at this point. If it works, you're home free, and if it fails, you can still fall back on joemike's instructions.

Right, but I still need to somehow be able to free up the space that the Catalina and Mojave partitions are taking up. That's why I am waiting more instructions before I d/l Catalina. I guess he didn't look at my profile regarding which version of Sierra I have, so at least that part should be simpler. I think I also told JoeMike I don't need to transfer Sierra to my internal drive since I have it on my external drive and also my older Mac. If I didn't tell him, that, I should have. Even when I have put older versions I thought I would like to keep on my external drive, I rarely, if ever, used them.

I think "going for broke" is your best approach at this point. If it works, you're home free, and if it fails, you can still fall back on joemike's instructions. [/quote]

By "going for broke" I mean deleting those extra partitions while booted into Sierra on your internal. It may leave that incarnation of Sierra unbootable, but the backup on your external covers that possibility.

And if Sierra remains bootable afterwards, it'll be a snap to upgrade to Catalina.

Important: Is Sierra on your external current/up to date?

I'm suggesting this only because for some bizarre reason you're unable to erase you internal while booted into your external.

You got it! I will do the spit shine on my instructions this afternoon when I get back fro the doctor's office.

Would you prefer to have them in the forum or as a downloadable PDF?

What do you think of my idea of trying a dynamic deletion of Rita's two extraneous internal partitions while she's booted into Sierra on her internal?

If it's successful, everyone saves a whole lot of time and effort and she can move right on to upgrading to Catalina, and if not, she remains at square one, i.e. still having to erase her internal.

Sierra on her external must, of course, be totally current, i.e. a mirror of her internal, but that's inherent in anything she does.

Yes, my Sierra is up to date on my external. I am awaiting JoeMike's new instructions and hopefully, this time my erase button won't be grayed out. Maybe I did something wrong. No surprise there!

It doesn't matter. Thanks.

1. In order to delete a partition the DRIVE must be DISMOUNTED
2. You CANNOT DISMOUNT THE BOOT DRIVE
3. Therefore what you suggest is NOT POSSIBLE

This would work IF we were dealing with APFS Volumes, but instead these are PARTITIONS.

I just re-updated my external drive just for the heck of it and it left this on my desktop. See screen shot below. Catalina and Mojave are empty but the Mac HD has stuff in it. This has never happened before when I used the external drive so I'm Screen Shot of Desktop not sure what I am supposed to do with these icons. Plus the new changes in the FTM website take some getting used to. No more ability to look up my old posts in an easy way that I can see. I tried to contact admin but the email bounces back as it has done before, so I contacted tech.

Those will be taken care of when you follow these instructions. Note previously I had referred to Macintosh HD an you told me your internal drive was named Apple HD and that is what used in my instructions.

I tried to post the instructions in the forum but this new version of UBB does not handle nested lists correctly and it was virtually unreadable. Let me know if you have any problem accessing the linked PDF version, and I will find another way to get them to you. . :(b

Thank you. I d/l'd the PDF and printed it. I followed instructions to III-D and got stuck. There are three partitions: Mac HD, Catalina and Mojave. Mac HD had a grayed out minus sign so I went to the other two. Their minus signs were not grayed out, but no matter which partition I picked, the apply button was grayed out. That's as far as I could get. So much fun for both of us! And don't worry, I know how much trouble everyone goes through to help me. I don't take it for granted.

Maybe a dumb question, but which drive were you booted into when you ran into the brick wall?

Well, now that's a tricky question. I started out booted into the extended drive in Sierra 2015 per JM's instructions. While in that drive I was to go into Disk Utility and select my internal drive and then into the partitions. That's where I encountered the problem.

Similar to the problem you encountered a week or so ago then.

BIZARRE! (Your description sounds like you were booted into your internal drive. )

Have you tried running Repair Disk on your internal while booted into your external?

Do you see any error type messages or notations, when you select a partition for instance?

🤬🤯⚡️Try this,

Step III.A' Select Catalina and click UnMount on the Disk Utility tool bar
Step III.A'' Select Mojave and click UnMount on the Disk Utility tool bar
go to Step III.B

By-the-way I'm glad you had no trouble getting the download. I had not tried that relatively new iCloud feature before and wasn't completely sure how it works. 👍