[Solved] Please help me to install Hackitosh on my SSD drive-formating problems APFS

[zakperic]

HI alll,

I finaly managed to install hackitosh today after two days of trying.
Here is where my problem is:
I have the six core i7 and Gigabyte Z370 motherboard.
I also have two GTX 980 Nvidia cards. I built this system so that I can work faster with C4d and Octane.

I manged to install successfully macOS High Sierra 10.13.4 on my drive. Unfortunately, Hackitosh would not recognize any of my SSD due to the change in formatting by Apple from Journaled to APFS. This is a massive pain for me as my system is now very slow as it runs from a Barracuda 7200 drive. I also purchased a Samsung PCI Express card 250 GB that does not work due to the same problems with formatting.

I would like to know can any of these two card be used without problems on a hackitosh:
Transcend TS256GMTS800S M.2 800S Series with High Quality "MLC NAND Flash 256GB M.2 SSD M.2 SATA III"

or

Samsung (MZ-V6E250BW) 250GB EVO PCI Express 3.0 x4 NVMe Solid State Drive

Further to this, can someone please help me find a solution to install my hackitosh system to one of the SSD drives I have. Even if this means cloning the system with Carbon Copy Cloner, which I read it is possible.
Is there a easy solution to trick macOS High Sierra Installer to think it is a journaled formatted drive.

Please note I am not very skilled but can do it with some guidance or even a video tutorial about how to reformat the drive to Journaled from APFS.
I have a nice system that works very slowely, what a shame. PLEASE, PLEASE HELP.

Many thanks

 

[sylux]

Hello zakperic,

a few weeks ago is had a very similar problem with installing macOS High Sierra on M2 SATA SSD and on M2 PCIE SSD (NVME).
Every time is started the installer from USB drive, previously made with UniBeast tool, I ran into an error while trying to format any of my two installed SDD drives with the Disk Utility tool.

What I did not know at the time was that the Disk Utility tool would not override nor delete the previous hidden boot and EFI partitions of the SSD. These partitions were there because I used Windows 10 on these SSD's before installing macOS on my Hackintosh (code name iHack).

The solution I found was to use the Terminal from the Utility tab of the installer to start 'diskutil' and format any of my SSD's with the file system and the name I wanted. When the format was done, just closed the terminal and resumed the installer. SSD Drives were detected and I could continue my OS installation.

The commands I used in terminal to format any of my SSD's are:

'diskutil list' to list any of my installed disks, in my case for the System was 'disk1'.
'diskutil eraseDisk HFS+ System /dev/disk1' to format disk1 as HFS+ file system with the name System.

You could also find more and better instructions on the Web on how to use 'diskutil' from Terminal.

I hope this will be of help to you or at least give you an idea on how to solve your problem.

Best regards,
Sylux

 

[zakperic]

thank you very much.
I will give it a go

 

[BreBo]

@zakperic, please update your profile (personal details) with your Motherboard (Mobo), CPU and iGPU or Graphics Card.

Profiles need to contain at least your primary system to assist others with helping you.

 

[zakperic]

Hello zakperic,

a few weeks ago is had a very similar problem with installing macOS High Sierra on M2 SATA SSD and on M2 PCIE SSD (NVME).
Every time is started the installer from USB drive, previously made with UniBeast tool, I ran into an error while trying to format any of my two installed SDD drives with the Disk Utility tool.

What I did not know at the time was that the Disk Utility tool would not override nor delete the previous hidden boot and EFI partitions of the SSD. These partitions were there because I used Windows 10 on these SSD's before installing macOS on my Hackintosh (code name iHack).

The solution I found was to use the Terminal from the Utility tab of the installer to start 'diskutil' and format any of my SSD's with the file system and the name I wanted. When the format was done, just closed the terminal and resumed the installer. SSD Drives were detected and I could continue my OS installation.

The commands I used in terminal to format any of my SSD's are:

'diskutil list' to list any of my installed disks, in my case for the System was 'disk1'.
'diskutil eraseDisk HFS+ System /dev/disk1' to format disk1 as HFS+ file system with the name System.

You could also find more and better instructions on the Web on how to use 'diskutil' from Terminal.

I hope this will be of help to you or at least give you an idea on how to solve your problem.

Best regards,
Sylux

I tired your technique, it looks like for every drive I have three different partitions.
See the image below. I manged to reformat (looking at the size the drive in question), what remains for me to know is how to make the three things that are attached to one drive, is this possible at all. If I just format the biggest drive, does this means I am done.

Please see the highlighted image below, would you be able to tell me am I doing it correctly.

I was getting a strange message from my boot drive all day today, and was not able to install OSX on my hackitosh again. See attached image with error. Do you know what is is.

Image from terminal (Screen Shot 2018-04-13 at 11.56.23)
Error Image from the installer I was getting all day. (IMG-6469.JPG

)

 

[Kylex427]

@zakperic

I'm not an expert by any stretch of the imagination, but I had the same issue as you when I was installing High Sierra. My problem ended up being solved when I realized that I didn't download the latest version of Unibeast. Make sure you are paying attention to the numbers because you definitely will want the most recent one. Once I fixed that issue and remade my bootable USB, it worked for me. Also, when making your bootable USB, don't forget to put the Multibeast for High Sierra in there; I made that mistake too. Haha.

I hope this helps, if not, I'm sorry. It helped me.

-Kyle

 

[zakperic]

@zakperic

I'm not an expert by any stretch of the imagination, but I had the same issue as you when I was installing High Sierra. My problem ended up being solved when I realized that I didn't download the latest version of Unibeast. Make sure you are paying attention to the numbers because you definitely will want the most recent one. Once I fixed that issue and remade my bootable USB, it worked for me. Also, when making your bootable USB, don't forget to put the Multibeast for High Sierra in there; I made that mistake too. Haha.

I hope this helps, if not, I'm sorry. It helped me.

-Kyle

Thank you I will try now again.

 

[sylux]

I tired your technique, it looks like for every drive I have three different partitions.
See the image below. I manged to reformat (looking at the size the drive in question), what remains for me to know is how to make the three things that are attached to one drive, is this possible at all. If I just format the biggest drive, does this means I am done.

Please see the highlighted image below, would you be able to tell me am I doing it correctly.

I was getting a strange message from my boot drive all day today, and was not able to install OSX on my hackitosh again. See attached image with error. Do you know what is is.

Image from terminal (Screen Shot 2018-04-13 at 11.56.23)
Error Image from the installer I was getting all day. (IMG-6469.JPGView attachment 325327 View attachment 325328 View attachment 325327 )

Sorry for the late replay, long day.

The screenshot from terminal looks ok. The thing is, when you format 'disk1' the first and second partition on the 'disk1' (disk1s1 and disk1s2) are created automatically and should be this way because the first partition (disk1s1) will later be for your bootloader and disk1s2 for your OS.

The error screenshot that you posted depends on other things but not your SSD's.
I remember having similar issues when trying to install macOS High Sierra because I had no Ethernet Cable plugged in or / and the time setting from my Hackintosh in BIOS were not the same as the apple time server. Check that to see if is related and also check that you have created your installer with the latest version of UniBeast.

Best of luck,
Sylux

 

[zakperic]

Sorry for the late replay, long day.

The screenshot from terminal looks ok. The thing is, when you format 'disk1' the first and second partition on the 'disk1' (disk1s1 and disk1s2) are created automatically and should be this way because the first partition (disk1s1) will later be for your bootloader and disk1s2 for your OS.

The error screenshot that you posted depends on other things but not your SSD's.
I remember having similar issues when trying to install macOS High Sierra because I had no Ethernet Cable plugged in or / and the time setting from my Hackintosh in BIOS were not the same as the apple time server. Check that to see if is related and also check that you have created your installer with the latest version of UniBeast.

Best of luck,
Sylux

Worked like a charm.
All running on very fast PCI SSD. Very happy I built this hackintosh, although it is early days. I am sure I will run in into problems along the way. Learned a lot in the last few days.

Thank you

 

[zakperic]

@zakperic

I'm not an expert by any stretch of the imagination, but I had the same issue as you when I was installing High Sierra. My problem ended up being solved when I realized that I didn't download the latest version of Unibeast. Make sure you are paying attention to the numbers because you definitely will want the most recent one. Once I fixed that issue and remade my bootable USB, it worked for me. Also, when making your bootable USB, don't forget to put the Multibeast for High Sierra in there; I made that mistake too. Haha.

I hope this helps, if not, I'm sorry. It helped me.

-Kyle

All sorted out. Thank you