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My mac doesn't find Macintosh HD after APFS conversion
- Thread starter faraone
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If you are booting to an older system (El Capitan or older), then Disk Utility will NOT show an APFS format drive. It's not a supported format before Sierra, and won't be visible at all.
If you have upgraded to High Sierra beta, and you have a Recovery system upgraded as well, then the APFS drive should be visible when you are booted to the recovery system.
But, I don't think you can successfully convert a (spinning) HDD to APFS.
So, if you still have the spinning hard drive, you will likely need to erase that drive, then reinstall macOS, then get your other apps and files from your backup.
You DO have a current backup, correct?
If you have upgraded to High Sierra beta, and you have a Recovery system upgraded as well, then the APFS drive should be visible when you are booted to the recovery system.
But, I don't think you can successfully convert a (spinning) HDD to APFS.
So, if you still have the spinning hard drive, you will likely need to erase that drive, then reinstall macOS, then get your other apps and files from your backup.
You DO have a current backup, correct?
this was a clean install, so i don't have any file in it. i'm trying to boot it with high sierra disk utility but it don't show the hdd. so how can i erase that drive if disk utility not shows the drive? do i need an other mac or pc?
Boot into recovery console -hold down Apple and R key and run disk utility from there. Does it show your drive?
Also try zapping PRAM - at boot hold Apple P and R Key all three simultaneously. Wait for a startup tone three times then release keys.
Then check if drive is back.
If not, last reset SMC - pull power plug out of mini and hold mini power button down for 10 seconds then release. Replug and boot again into recovery disk utility.
Your 2012 Mac mini should boot to internet recovery (boot, holding Option-Command-R). That should boot to either 10.8 or 10.9 -- which can take more time as it boots from Apple's server.
You should be able to see the drive to erase it.
If not, you may need another bootable OS X installer, such as 10.10 (Yosemite) to be able to remove the partitions with Disk Utility.
You should be able to see the drive to erase it.
If not, you may need another bootable OS X installer, such as 10.10 (Yosemite) to be able to remove the partitions with Disk Utility.
You could try running terminal in recovery mode and using the command "diskutil list"
It should show your partitions whether readable/mountable or not and give you more of an idea of if you're just SOL or not. If they do show I would try finding your boot partition disk and using "sudo mount /dev/diskXsY" (and replace the X and Y with information from the previous command) and seeing what errors/if any errors pop up.
You can also use terminal to verify/repair partitions if you find them using: https://gist.github.com/bzerangue/dca8fc2d63309ba2bd9f
It should show your partitions whether readable/mountable or not and give you more of an idea of if you're just SOL or not. If they do show I would try finding your boot partition disk and using "sudo mount /dev/diskXsY" (and replace the X and Y with information from the previous command) and seeing what errors/if any errors pop up.
You can also use terminal to verify/repair partitions if you find them using: https://gist.github.com/bzerangue/dca8fc2d63309ba2bd9f
Some systems I have found do not have the firmware update which allows booting from APFS. When I change the format to Extended Journaled, it boots fine.
you should clean install high Sierra tformatting your hd in HFS+ so that high Sierra can install a required firmware upgrade to support apfs. It starts the install, reboots, you'll ear a BONG, it'll appear the apple logo and a big progress bar (DON'T interrupt), it'll restart again with normal progress bar. Only after that your Mac will be able to "see" apfs volumes.
After that boot from recovery and convert to apfs.
DONE