[Solved] Crazy idea: moving SSD with HS from one HW to another

[rommy]

Hi,
do you think it's possible to move my sata M4 SSD with High Sierra 10.13.1 mounted on a old Gigabyte X58A to a new build made with a Gigabyte Aorus UG Z370 and I7 8700K?
I intend to try booting from USB having changed the EFI folder with one of a similar build got in the specific forum of this site.
My new hardware is already set up with W10, but I don't want to loose a dual boot with HS (on another SSD).
Unfortunately my old hackintosh has died.
Is this so crazy and foolish or do you think I can succeed?
Bye

 

[cmn699]

Hi,
do you think it's possible to move my sata M4 SSD with High Sierra 10.13.1 mounted on a old Gigabyte X58A to a new build made with a Gigabyte Aorus UG Z370 and I7 8700K?
I intend to try booting from USB having changed the EFI folder with one of a similar build got in the specific forum of this site.
My new hardware is already set up with W10, but I don't want to loose a dual boot with HS (on another SSD).
Unfortunately my old hackintosh has died.
Is this so crazy and foolish or do you think I can succeed?
Bye

Seems to me to be a square peg in a round hole project; keep your troubleshoot hammer ready!

 

[hanuman]

My new hardware is already set up with W10, but I don't want to loose a dual boot with HS (on another SSD).

This makes it sound like you've already got a working High Sierra system on the 8700K. If that's the case then your existing Clover environment might (should?) just boot the SSD from the X58. Most of the critical files for getting a Hackintosh running are in the EFI partition so if you have a proven EFI boot partition then it's usually fairly trivial (to an experienced Hackintosher that is) to boot a "foreign" system via that proven EFI boot.

 

[rommy]

This makes it sound like you've already got a working High Sierra system on the 8700K. If that's the case then your existing Clover environment might (should?) just boot the SSD from the X58. Most of the critical files for getting a Hackintosh running are in the EFI partition so if you have a proven EFI boot partition then it's usually fairly trivial (to an experienced Hackintosher that is) to boot a "foreign" system via that proven EFI boot.

Thank you hanuman, you encourage me to proceed, but let me describe more precisely my situation.

A working HS system on the 8700K is what I'm looking for. Maybe I was confusing trying to explain my 'project'.
I have an old system, described in my profile on the left. It's a dual boot with W10 and HS 10.13.1. It worked like a charm till some weeks ago. Suddenly W10 began to boot up very slowly (up to 10 mins!!) after the Fall Creator Update, but I'm not sure this is the real reason of the slow down. For a certain time HS could be booted, but now it freezes during start up, so I decided to build a completely new system because I concluded I've some hardware faults on my mainboard (but W10 still works!).

The new system is made basically with:
MB: Aorus UG Z370
CPU: Intel I7 8700K
RAM: 16 Gb DDR4 Ballistix,
GPU: ASUS GTX10150 OC
HD: Samsung SSD M.2 EVO 960 drive (guesting W10)
PSU: Corsair 650RX

My idea is, instead of reinstalling HS from scratch, to move the sata M4 SSD from old system to the new one.
I imagine I'll have to solve some troubles with the EFI clover config file. I do not intend to use the old one working on the X58A, but a full EFI folder got from others user's build made available through this site. I will choose obviously one from a system very similar to mine.
This is my challenge.
Bye

 

[hanuman]

It should be do-able. MacOS X is generally much more tolerant to being moved around systems than Windows. It'll be easier with another Hackintosh or Mac on hand, obviously. You should initially try to boot with nVidia drivers disabled. Assuming you can get the system booted without stops or panics then the most likely hurdle will be the "Black Screen" problem which afflicts any Hackintosh that's based on a Retina iMac SMBIOS, which an 8700K system probably will be. You need to edit
/System/Library/Extensions/AppleGraphicsControl.kext/Contents/PlugIns/AppleGraphicsDevicePolicy.kext/Contents/Info.plist to disable the special display mode for that model. There are instructions elsewhere on the site for how to do this.

But before doing that it makes sense to run the combo updater for 10.13.3 (or 10.13.4, just released but no nVidia web driver as I type this) which should reset a few system files, especially AppleHDA.kext, allowing you to start relatively fresh.

Do all of this initially with no internet connection. You'll need to change the serial numbers and UUID in Clover Configurator if you're coming from an existing EFI from another machine. If you have another Mac then you can do this prior to attempting to boot the 8700K for the first time and it's safe to keep the internet on.

 

[rommy]

It should be do-able. MacOS X is generally much more tolerant to being moved around systems than Windows. It'll be easier with another Hackintosh or Mac on hand, obviously. You should initially try to boot with nVidia drivers disabled. Assuming you can get the system booted without stops or panics then the most likely hurdle will be the "Black Screen" problem which afflicts any Hackintosh that's based on a Retina iMac SMBIOS, which an 8700K system probably will be. You need to edit
/System/Library/Extensions/AppleGraphicsControl.kext/Contents/PlugIns/AppleGraphicsDevicePolicy.kext/Contents/Info.plist to disable the special display mode for that model. There are instructions elsewhere on the site for how to do this.

But before doing that it makes sense to run the combo updater for 10.13.3 (or 10.13.4, just released but no nVidia web driver as I type this) which should reset a few system files, especially AppleHDA.kext, allowing you to start relatively fresh.

Do all of this initially with no internet connection. You'll need to change the serial numbers and UUID in Clover Configurator if you're coming from an existing EFI from another machine. If you have another Mac then you can do this prior to attempting to boot the 8700K for the first time and it's safe to keep the internet on.

Hi, I won my challenge. In fact I'm writing from my booted HS 10.13.1 stored on the old M4 data SSD!
It was a hard fight against kernel panics (after a lot of ACPI errors leading to MACH reboot), but I found a magic config.plist that allowed me to boot.
There where some patches applied to DSDT. I don' know exactly the meaning but it worked.
I created immediately a new Unibeast USB drive for future installations. I'm afraid I can loose the configuration.
No troubles at all with Nvidia drivers.
Next steps: upgrade to 10.13.4 and move High Sierra to a M2 SSD.
Bye