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macOS High Sierra brings with it a new filing system known as APFS (Apple File System). APFS replaces HFS+ (Hierarchical File System Plus), and offers a new, modern file system that is optimized for use with SSDs (Solid State Drives), while still being usable on hard drives and, in the near future, even on tiered storage systems such as Apple’s Fusion drive.
As part of the upgrade process, the macOS High Sierra installer will automatically convert an SSD to the new APFS. The conversion process leaves the drive’s data intact, or at least it’s supposed to; be sure you have a recent backup before upgrading, just in case. At the time of this writing, the automatic conversion process is limited to internal SSDs. External SSDs being used as startup drives seem to be left with their original file system, with no conversion to APFS occurring. However, this could change with the next update to macOS High Sierra, as it seems Apple is committed to growing APFS usage across all Apple devices.
Although the conversion to APFS will happen automatically if your Mac startup drive meets the criteria, specifically, an SSD occupying a connection internally to your Mac, you can choose not to use APFS and force the installation to bypass the conversion process, leaving your startup drive in the older HFS+ format.
How to Prevent Automatic Conversion to APFS
There are a couple of strategies you can use to prevent the upgrade to APFS and retain the older HFS+ formatting:
There are a couple of strategies you can use to prevent the upgrade to APFS and retain the older HFS+ formatting:
Use an external drive: You can choose an external drive as the target for the macOS High Sierra upgrade. This will allow you to retain the current formatting on the external. Once the upgrade is complete, you can clone the external drive back to your normal internal startup drive. Carbon Copy Cloner and SuperDuper are two popular apps for creating clones. You could use Disk Utility’s Restore feature to create your clone as well.
Use startosinstall: macOS High Sierra includes a command line tool hidden away within the installer that can be used to control the conversion to APFS. By using this tool, you can tell the installer not to convert to APFS during the installation process.
While either method will work, using the startosinstall utility is the easiest and quickest process. It allows you to perform the macOS High Sierra upgrade without any conversion to APFS. It also allows you to skip the additional step and save the additional time needed to make a clone, as required in the external drive method.
Using Startosinstall to Prevent Conversion to APFS
Startosinstall is included as part of the macOS High Sierra installer. If you downloaded the installer from the Mac App Store, you’re all set. If you happen to have the installer open, waiting for you to start the macOS High Sierra install process, simply quit the installer (Command + Q). You need to invoke the installer from the Terminal command line for the option to not install APFS to be available.
Startosinstall is included as part of the macOS High Sierra installer. If you downloaded the installer from the Mac App Store, you’re all set. If you happen to have the installer open, waiting for you to start the macOS High Sierra install process, simply quit the installer (Command + Q). You need to invoke the installer from the Terminal command line for the option to not install APFS to be available.
Before you begin, make sure you have a recent backup of all the data on your current startup drive and the target drive for the installation (if they’re different). Better to be safe than sorry.
Startosinstall has a number of options for automating the installation process. This includes the APFS option, which can be used to prevent the conversion to APFS, or for that matter, to force the conversion, making it a bit easier to upgrade an external SSD to macOS High Sierra should you decide you want to use APFS.
(The startosinstall command can prevent the conversion to APFS.)
When you’re ready, launch Terminal, located at /Applications/Utilities/.
Disable APFS Conversion
At the Terminal prompt, enter the following:
At the Terminal prompt, enter the following:
sudo /Applications/Install macOS High Sierra.app/Contents/Resources/startosinstall –applicationpath /Applications/Install macOS High Sierra.app –converttoapfs NO
and then press enter or return to start the upgrade process with no conversion to APFS. By the way, you can triple-click the above command to select the entire command, and then copy/paste it into Terminal.
Press enter or return, then supply your administrator password and press enter or return. Quick heal pro 2013 keyzen review.
Note: When you enter your password in Terminal, no text will be displayed, giving the impression that Terminal isn’t accepting your input. This is a security feature to ensure prying eyes can’t see your password as it is typed.
You’ll be presented with the license for using macOS High Sierra. You can agree to the license terms by entering a capital A at the prompt.
The startosinstall script will start copying needed files to the target disk (in this example, the current startup disk). You’ll see Terminal counting up to one hundred. When it reaches 100, all the needed files will have been copied, and your Mac will reboot and start the actual installation of the new operating system without converting the startup disk to APFS. Hymns of victory.
(You can use Disk Utility to check to see if the startup drive was converted to APFS. In this image, you can see that the description says Mac OS Extended (Journaled).)
Force APFS Conversion
You can use startosinstall to force a conversion to APFS in some cases, but not all. Apple currently prevents any Fusion drive from being converted. You can, however, use this command to force conversion on hard drives or SSDs. Please note: at this time you may want to limit the use of APFS to just your SSDs. See the Take a Deep Dive into Apple’s APFS video for details.
You can use startosinstall to force a conversion to APFS in some cases, but not all. Apple currently prevents any Fusion drive from being converted. You can, however, use this command to force conversion on hard drives or SSDs. Please note: at this time you may want to limit the use of APFS to just your SSDs. See the Take a Deep Dive into Apple’s APFS video for details.
At the Terminal prompt, enter the following:
sudo /Applications/Install macOS High Sierra.app/Contents/Resources/startosinstall –applicationpath /Applications/Install macOS High Sierra.app –converttoapfs YES
Press enter or return.
Terminal will start copying the needed files to the startup disk. Once the process is complete, your Mac will restart and complete the installation of macOS High Sierra, including the conversion of the startup drive to APFS.
Install macOS High Sierra on a Drive Other Than the Startup Disk
So far we’ve seen how you can use Terminal to install macOS High Sierra on the startup disk while either preventing or forcing the conversion of the target drive to APFS. You can also use the startosinstall command to specify the target for the install.
So far we’ve seen how you can use Terminal to install macOS High Sierra on the startup disk while either preventing or forcing the conversion of the target drive to APFS. You can also use the startosinstall command to specify the target for the install.
The feature in startupinstall to specify a target isn’t documented, though it’s present in earlier versions of OS X and macOS installers. When the documentation for a command option is removed, it could indicate that the feature is deprecated, and may not be supported at some later date. For now, the feature to specify a target using the “–volume ” switch (without the quotes) seems to still be working.
To specify what drive to install macOS High Sierra on, other than the startup drive, you need to add the following to either of the Terminal command lines listed above:
— volume /path to the volume you wish to use
An example for installing macOS High Sierra on a drive named HighSierra without converting the target volume to APFS would be:
sudo /Applications/Install macOS High Sierra.app/Contents/Resources/startosinstall –applicationpath /Applications/Install macOS High Sierra.app –converttoapfs NO –volume /Volumes/HighSierra
This would force the installation to occur on a volume named HighSierra. An easy way to enter the actual pathname to the drive you wish to use is to enter the command in Terminal without the actual pathname, so the command would end after — volume (make sure there’s a space after the word volume). Now drag the drive from the Finder and drop it on the Terminal window. Terminal will add the actual pathname to the drive for you. All that’s left to do is press enter or return.
(Instead of trying to figure out the correct pathname to the target drive, simply drag the disk to the command line. Terminal will enter the pathname for you.)
The — volume switch will also work when you wish to force a conversion to APFS, as shown in this example, which will convert the drive named HighSierra to APFS and install the new version of macOS:
sudo /Applications/Install macOS High Sierra.app/Contents/Resources/startosinstall –applicationpath /Applications/Install macOS High Sierra.app –converttoapfs YES –volume /Volumes/HighSierra
By using the startosinstall command from within Terminal, the choice to convert to APFS or leave the target drive’s format unchanged is entirely up to you.
Recently upgraded to macOS 10.14.1, and my drive remained HFS+. I have made sure to add all drivers needed for APFS in my Clover EFI. Now I..
Convert To Apfs Greyed Out In Windows 10
Recently upgraded to macOS 10.14.1, and my drive remained HFS+. I have made sure to add all drivers needed for APFS in my Clover EFI. Now I'm trying to convert to APFS because I want to update to 10.14.4.
I've tried booting to recovery mode and using Disk Utility to convert, but the option 'Convert to APFS' is grayed out. Tried First Aid but didn't change anything. That's all I've tried.
Was hoping there would be some workaround or Terminal command to do this..
I'm using an HDD, speaking of which, is it suitable for APFS? I've seen some users trying to go back to HFS+ or even skipping drive conversion. Is there any reason I should remain in HFS+?
submitted by /u/thetrexyl[link][comments]
With the launch of Apple's new Mac operating System, MacOS High Sierra, Apple has introduced a new file system called APFS.
Standing for Apple File System, the new file format offers a much quicker experience that is designed for future growth and brings the MacOS operating system in line with the same file system that is the backbone of iOS.
Installing High Sierra on your Mac automatically makes the change for you on your main hard drive, be it your MacBook or iMac, but it won't convert any external drives you have connected to the computer.
You have to opt to do that yourself, and for good reason.
Converting your external drives to APFS will give you all the same benefits you get from converting your main drive and will mean faster copying and duplication, better partition management, and native encryption, amongst other things.
- See external hard drives on Amazon US - Amazon UK
You can convert all your external hard drives, regardless of whether they are solid state or not, via Apple's Disk Utility app.
Open Disk Utility (command+space to launch Spotlight then type Disk Utility), then select the drive you want to convert. Go to Edit in the menu bar, and click on 'Convert to APFS'.
The process, depending on the size of your drive, will take only a couple of minutes, and once complete, the external drive will be running on the new APFS format.
There is a catch though.
Converting your hard drive to APFS means it won't be able to be read by Macs or PCs not running APFS drives, which is any computer that isn't running MacOS High Sierra.
High Sierra is able to run on all iMacs and MacBooks launched after 2009.
If you only use your external hard drive in your home with your own Macs that are all running High Sierra it won't be a problem, if however, you use that drive to share with other computers that you know won't have upgraded to High Sierra, it won't work. The drive will be unreadable to everyone but you and your High Sierra running machine.
Now that I have been using the APFS version of High Sierra on my internal iMac SSD for a week or so, I decided to format all my external drives to APFS as well. I tried this the first day in APFS High Sierra and it would not allow me to do the format, but things have changed.
APFS & Disk Utility
After moving my Photos Library back on to my internal SSD I decided my next step was to format all my external USB drives (I have several of them) to APFS. Here is how that works.
Open the new Disk Utility app in High Sierra:
When you first open Disk Utility you will not see all of this information in the sidebar. You will just see a list of the “logical drives”. To expand that list, just click on the “View” menu in the upper left corner and choose “Show All Devices”.
Convert To Apfs Greyed Out In Windows 7
To change an external drive into the APFS format you start by right-clicking on the logical drive name and choosing “Convert to APFS” from the drop down menu:
Disk Utility will then warn you that the drive cannot be used with older macOS versions if converted:
When you click “Convert”, Disk Utility does the conversion:
This took a couple of minutes for my machine, YMMV. Once the conversion is finished you get this completion window:
If you do a Get Info on the drive in the Finder you will see it is APFS:
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I am pretty sure I will not need to read these drives with older Mac OS’s. That is why I went ahead and did the conversions.
One Caveat
There is one caveat here. When I first tried this in High Sierra it would not allow the conversion, as previously mentioned. After converting all my external drives, I tried to convert my external Clone drive of my iMac. I use Carbon Copy Cloner to make the clone once a week. Here is what I got when I attempted the conversion on this drive:
If you look closely at the drop down menu, the “Convert to APFS” command is grayed out. I even booted into the Clone thinking that may make a difference, but no joy.
So, why did the other drives work and not the Clone drive? Here is my theory. I think after you interact with external HFS+ drives with your main APFS system it will allow you to upgrade them to APFS. I guess it has to be taught these drives are there or something. I am not really sure, but it does work now.
Here is my theory on the Clone drive. Carbon Copy Cloner sets up the Clone drive to be bootable. It is a bootable HFS+ external drive. I think because it is bootable, Disk Utility will not allow it to be upgraded to APFS. If I ever wish to get my Clone drive to APFS, I think I will have to Erase and format it to APFS from scratch, then put a clone onto it. Another project for another time.
Conclusion
My High Sierra install is running very well. There are a few issues which I am sure will be fixed in High Sierra ver. 10.13.1 which is already out in Beta format. If you don’t feel comfortable formatting your external drives to APFS, there is no harm in waiting a while. But, if you are game, it is pretty easy to do. My APFS formatted external drives are all working fine by the way.