Believe it or not I woke up this morning at 4:00 AM worried you might do something to get into trouble.
OK. Yes, I have Sierra on an external drive which I guess I am supposed to erase and use again because maybe it's in a million pieces from what I've read here.
- use Disk Utility to erase and partition your external HD to a single partition (GUID partiton scheme, Mac OS Extended (Journaled)
- Verify you are running the latest version of Carbon Copy Cloner by going to Carbon Copy Cloner > Check For Updates
- Clone MACINTOSH HD to your external HD
- Control+Click on your external HD and select Rename from the drop down menu
- Rename the external HD Sierra Clone to prevent confusion
- in System Preferences > Startup Drive select Sierra Clone and reboot (NOTE: it will take a lot longer because your external drive is a LOT slower than your flash drive.)
- Run from the external drive for several hours — even a day or two — to be sure the clone is good
- in System Preferences > Startup Drive select MACINTOSH HD and reboot
- In order to keep your two drives synchronized clone MACINTOSH HD to Sierra Clone every day (you can automate that in CCC).
I guess I will call up Disk Utility and erase my partitions for Mojave and Catalina and just install a new O.S. when I am ready. It will incorporate the stuff I have on Sierra which is what I want to keep it simple.
Getting rid of partitions is not always straight forward or easy because deleting a partition is not enough you have to expand another partition to encompass the newly freed up disk space and that can be tricky and can cause data loss. That is why I said to be sure you have a good clone first.
AN EASY WAY TO GET RID OF YOUR PARTITIONS ON YOUR flash drive assuming you have performed the previous steps:
- Boot from your Sierra Clone
- Launch Disk Utility and erase/repartition MACINTOSH HD to a single partiton (GUID partition scheme, Mac OS Extended (Journaled) format)
- Launch Crbon Copy Cloner and Clone Sierra Clone to MACINTOSH HD
- In System Preferences > Startup Drive choose MACINTOSH HD as the startup drive and Reboot.
Though I know I will lose some of my ad blocking apps.
Lose some gain more. I have gotten rid of all but WIPR with no increase in annoying adds but major improvement in site specific control within Safari/Safari Technology Preview itself. I haven't lost any functionality I needed or wanted just adjusted to new controls.
NOTE: Please don't make assumptions and/or bypass any of these steps. Print them out and check them off as you do each one just to be sure you don't miss something.
