[SOLVED] Upgrading from HighSierra to Catalina, no disk to install

[sdancer75]

I followed the guide from the link below using UniBeast to create an external USB.

UniBeast: Install macOS Catalina on Any Supported Intel-based PC

After booting with USB, I got to the recovery console, and from there, I selected to upgrade MacOS to Catalina. Unfortunately, only the external USB was available (locked) and not my High Sierra SSD. My SSD has the HFS file system and I read that Catalina needs the APFS file system.

So, the question is, if the file system prevents me to continue the upgrade and if yes, how to move on?

The system console has disabled the option to convert my current file system to APFS and furthermore, I read that this could cause booting problems with Clover.

 

[sdancer75]

Update: I converted my SSD to APFS but the external USB installation still can not detect the installed High Sierra disk to continue its installation. Direct installation (without USB) shows me the prohibited sign after the install icon.

Any ideas?

 

[Feartech]

Update: I converted my SSD to APFS but the external USB installation still can not detect the installed High Sierra disk to continue its installation. Direct installation (without USB) shows me the prohibited sign after the install icon.

Any ideas?

usb issue

make sure to use a USB2.0 stick, try all ports, make sure USBInjectAll.kext is present in your kexts folder

 

[sdancer75]

usb issue

make sure to use a USB2.0 stick, try all ports, make sure USBInjectAll.kext is present in your kexts folder

The prohibited sign comes when I try to install from SSD directly and "no disk" to select, when booted from USB.

So how can I make sure that usb2.0 stick is used when this problem comes from ssd installation with no USB stick used at all?

 

[sdancer75]

It seems that the reason the installer does not show the main SSD is that "disk1s1 is not convertible to APFS: You may not install to this volume because it cannot be converted to Apple File System (APFS)."

The strange thing here is that the disk is already converted to APFS

So the USB I created with UniBeast is not going on further because of the error above, and the Direct Install is not going on further, because of the "Still Waiting for Root Device" and the Prohibited sign, which is somewhat related to the USB device except that I don't use any USB device but rather the internal SSD Drive only.

Now what? I am with this for more than 6 days now without success. High Sierra still works fine.

 

[sdancer75]

UPDATE: I bought a brand new SSD 256GB for a clean installation.

I booted with my USB (Clover 5117) and again DiskUtil as well as Catalina Installer could not detect the new disk. I tried to boot again with my old SSD (High Sierra) and I formatted the new disk as "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)". I tried again with my installer USB but again Installer could not detect the formatted SSD.

What am I doing wrong here? Why installer can not detect SSDs?

 

[sdancer75]

[SOLVED] Finally I solved my problem with the SATA controller. High Sierra was running fine on this board, so I copied IOATAFAMILY.KEXT (from my High Sierra setup, or the one I attached), to the "clover/kext/other" folder.

Very important when installing Catalina to this board (Asus P5KPL-AM SE LGA 775 or similar mobos) it's critical to use a compatible for your CPU processor Telemetry plugin. Otherwise, the installation procedure will break and a restarting loop will begin at the moment when otherwise a setup screen appears (3rd stage). I used the one from my High Sierra installation.

Steps to follow to install Catalina on this board and other LGA 775 M/Bs that only support SSE4.1 (Catalina requires SSE4.2 CPUs)

1. download Catalina
2. create a bootable USB stick with UniBeast (Catalina), Clover 5119
3. copy the IOATAFAMILY.KEXT in your kext folder (other) in USB.
4. After step 3, installation is now able to recognize the connected SSD
5. Select the drive to install Catalina. Make sure to partition the drive as APFS, otherwise, updating/installation will not work.
6. After the first installation restart, boot with your old OS i.e. High Sierra or Mojave.
7. Open your new Catalina drive inside High Sierra or Mojave OS, and drop the Telemetry plugin com.apple.telemetry.plugin (attached) from High Sierra in this folder /Volumes/Catalina/System/Library/UserEventPlugins.
8. Repair permissions i.e sudo chown -v -R root:wheel ./UserEventPlugins/ and sudo chmod -v -R 755 ./UserEventPlugins. The final telemetry plugin should look like this: drwxr-xr-x 3 root wheel 96 Feb 4 2018 com.apple.telemetry.plugin. Reboot manually.
8. Continue the Catalina installation and you will see the setup screen.