The guide quickly covers the process of installing the fresh macOS High Sierra 10.13.6 on SSD drive without APFS conversion. The guide works for both MacBooks and Windows PC /Laptops (Sky Lake & Kaby Lake) and helps you skip APFS conversion that takes place during High Sierra installation when you use SSD drives as APFS supports only SSD and there’s no support for Fusion drives in Mac; let alone hard drives.
Installing High Sierra Without APFS Conversion
So let us begin with the Guide. We will simultaneously explain steps for installation of High Sierra both on Mac and PC. Therefore, if you have a MacBook or iMac, follow the steps mentioned for Mac and vice-versa. However, most steps while installation is the same for both.
Create macOS High Sierra USB Installer (for PC)
To install macOS High Sierra on an Intel-based Desktop or Laptop, create a macOS High Sierra USB drive. For that, you need USB 3.0 flash drive (at least 8GB) (No USB drive required for Mac Users)
- Download macOS High Sierra from App Store (both Mac and PC users)
- Formatting the USB flash drive for the installer
- Open terminal and type
diskutil list
- Note the USB disk number and then type
sudo diskutil partitionDisk disk3 GPT JHFS+ HighSierra R
- Press Enter/Return
- Enter the password and within a few seconds, the USB flash drive will be formatted to GPT JHFS+ partition. You may also use Disk Utility to format the drive. The choice is yours.
- After formatting, copy and paste the following command
sudo /Applications/Install\ macOS\ High\ Sierra.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/HighSierra --applicationpath /Applications/Install\ macOS\ High\ Sierra.app
- Let it finish and after USB installer is created, Mac users can turn off their system
Installing macOS High Sierra & Mojave Without APFS
- type following command in Terminal
diskutil list
- Note the USB disk EFI partition number and type
diskutil mountPartition disk1s1
- Go to Finder and paste the EFI folder here. If you are new to Hackintosh, download our EFI folder and paste it in EFI partition after replacing the config.plist file under EFI>CLOVER folder with the one compatible with your system. Refer to this repository by Rehabman on Laptop Plist
- In case you are using a system with Kaby Lake processor, use our EFI folder as it is.
- Now turn off PC and boot it via USB installer using boot option key or altering BIOS settings
- Go to Disk Utility and select the SSD and erase it to MacOS Extended (Journaled). Remember the name you give to your SSD after erasing the SSD. In our case it’s ‘HighSierraSSD‘
- Close Disk utility and choose Install macOS from the option
- After loading files on the SSD drive, the system will automatically reboot.
- When PC reboots, you need to choose the USB installer again
- Boot from Install macOS High Sierra from High Sierra Installer
- This time when you see installation interface, Go to Utilities and choose Terminal
- Now type the following commands in the Terminal (one by one followed by ‘Enter’ key after each command)
ls –l /Volumes
- The SSD volume where you installing macOS high Sierra is also displayed
- So next, we will change directory to the SSD volume by entering following command
cd /Volumes/HighSierraSSD
- Then type,
cd “macos install data” and press Enter/return
vi minstallconfig.xml
- Now press letter ‘I’ on the keyboard to enter insert mode
- Move the cursor to ConvertToAPFS
- Under it, use Delete key and delete ‘true’ value. Then type false (see screenshot)
- Press ‘I’ again to quit insert mode and the type :wg followed by ‘Enter’ key
- In case you messed up things, type :q and press enter to quit without saving and repeat the process
- After editing the file, close the terminal and restart the system.
- PC users need to select the SSD from clover bootloader to proceed with high sierra installation without APFS conversion and Mac users don’t need to do anything extra. Simply restart and your Mac will resume installation
- After installation, go to About system and open System report. Click Storage and there you will see that your SSD is HFS+ formatted and didn’t convert to APFS
So there you have it, a clean macOS High Sierra Installation without APFS conversion
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