Use existing setup to reinstall again

[papalord]

Sorry if this is the wrong place to post this.

Recently I bought a HP Z420 workstation, and it had already macOS Sierra 10.12.6 pre-installed. However, it was installed on a small SSD (128 GB) and, while I was able to copy the EFI/Sierra partition to a larger hard disk I'm unable to resize the OS partition so it can use the remaining space completely. I tried using Disk Utility with no luck, it doesn't do anything at all.

Now what I'd like to do is reinstall Sierra, using the existing configs/kexts in my working installation. I have no experience (I'm coming from a mainly linux environment), so any help would be greatly appreciated. I already tried making a bootable pendrive with Sierra using unibeast but it won't boot on my computer (perhaps because I have a nvidia graphics card, idk).

 

[Jamesbond007]

Sorry if this is the wrong place to post this.

Recently I bought a HP Z420 workstation, and it had already macOS Sierra 10.12.6 pre-installed. However, it was installed on a small SSD (128 GB) and, while I was able to copy the EFI/Sierra partition to a larger hard disk I'm unable to resize the OS partition so it can use the remaining space completely. I tried using Disk Utility with no luck, it doesn't do anything at all.

Now what I'd like to do is reinstall Sierra, using the existing configs/kexts in my working installation. I have no experience (I'm coming from a mainly linux environment), so any help would be greatly appreciated. I already tried making a bootable pendrive with Sierra using unibeast but it won't boot on my computer (perhaps because I have a nvidia graphics card, idk).

Have you used cloning software such as SuperDuper?

If that system already have Sierra installed on a SSD, you can connect a larger drive, then start the computer boot into Sierra. Use Disk Utility to partition your larger drive, and download a cloning software such as SuperDuper. You can use it to clone the MacOS installation from the smaller drive to the larger drive.

I also read somewhere that you can then use Clover Configurator to mount the EFI partitions of both drives and copy the contents from the EFI partition of the old drive to the EFI partition of the new drive. Not sure whether this will enable booting Clover from the new drive though.

 

[papalord]

Have you used cloning software such as SuperDuper?

If that system already have Sierra installed on a SSD, you can connect a larger drive, then start the computer boot into Sierra. Use Disk Utility to partition your larger drive, and download a cloning software such as SuperDuper.
---

Thanks for the reply. I already copied the existing installation (along with the EFI partition) to a larger hard disk using dd from linux, and everything was smooth. However, I can't resize it with with disk utility (the application just won't do anything at all). I tried using macOS' terminal utility to do the same thing and it asked me to repair the partition using recovery mode which for sure my pc doesn't have. I already tried repairing/enlarging macOS' partition from Linux with no luck.
That's why I would like to install over again, but using existing kexts/configs. I mean, my PC runs Sierra flawlessly but I don't know what to do to install it again. I was thinking about using existing flags, kexts, etc.

I have 2x2TB spare hard drives which I could use for something else, but again, I'd like to know how to be able to reinstall macOS if something wrong happens.
PS. The sector problem isn't related to physical failures. I guess I did something wrong with dd but Sierra works okay anyway.

 

[Jamesbond007]

Thanks for the reply. I already copied the existing installation (along with the EFI partition) to a larger hard disk using dd from linux, and everything was smooth. However, I can't resize it with with disk utility (the application just won't do anything at all). I tried using macOS' terminal utility to do the same thing and it asked me to repair the partition using recovery mode which for sure my pc doesn't have. I already tried repairing/enlarging macOS' partition from Linux with no luck

That's why I would like to install over again, but using existing kexts/configs. I mean, my PC runs Sierra flawlessly but I don't know what to do to install it again. I was thinking about using existing flags, kexts, etc.

I have 2x2TB spare hard drives which I could use for something else, but again, I'd like to know how to be able to reinstall macOS if something wrong happens.

PS. The sector problem isn't related to physical failures. I guess I did something wrong with dd but Sierra works okay anyway.

If you do it according to my procedures you should not need to reinstall Sierra again. When you partition your new disk using Disk Utility in MacOS you can ask it to create a partition that encompass the whole disk, and then when you launch SuperDuper (it runs inside MacOS) you can ask it to clone your running MacOS partition to the partition on the new disk. That way the cloned MacOS partition will occupy the whole of your new disk.

But of course if you want to try to install MacOS Sierra from scratch that is your choice. But I still recommend you keep your old MacOS installation intact on your old disk as a backup.