10.13 will not boot after conversion to APFS

“I converted the partition to APFS using the Disk Utility, and High Sierra would not boot, so I had to convert back HFS+ to make it bootable.” How did you go about converting APFS back to HFS+?

There is a box that needs to be checked when installing 10.13 in order for the drive to be converted to APFS, did you check that box?

What type of drive are you converting to APFS, SSD or a normal HDD?

There is NO non-destructive way back! The partition itself however CAN be returned to HFS+.

Using the lastest beta version of CarbonCopy Cloner, make a bootable clone of the APFS volume to an external volume

Boot to the clone and launch Terminal

Execute diskutil apfs deleteContainer disk# (use diskutil apfs list to determine the disk#). This will wipe the APFS container info and reformat the partition to HFS+

From here you can either install a new copy of 10.13 and the use the data migration utility to restore everything (safest way to ensure no corruption) OR

you could simply restore the CC clone to the newly HFS+ formatted partition.

I suppose it is a HDD drive as 2009 iMac don't have internal SSD drive.

I had the same problem as fran22431 with my 2009 iMac. When you install High Sierra Beta, you don't have the option to convert in APFS, so after installation, I reboot in recovery mode and use disk utiliy to convert my boot partition in APFS (I have 2 partitions on my internal drive).

Conversion was fine but impossible to reboot in normal mode, only recovery mode reboot. Reason was: impossible to add boot information on this partition or something like that (don't remember exactly).

So, only possibility will be to format the disk in HFS and install Beta again. Before that, I engage a procédure to backup my partition but was not able to make disk image of the partition or even of a folder within this partition. So I plug an external USB drive and install Beta on it, then restart. To my surprise, it restart on my internal partition and since then, no problem, I reboot several time.

DIsk info on this partition indicate that it is not bootable, but as for my MacBook Air with SSD, so this flag seems useless.

There is a checkbox to convert to APFS when you install 10.13 beta if your HDD is suitable, like SSD or smaller Fusion drives.

I guess that you don't have that option because you have a conventional HDD installed and Apple only wants those with Fusion or SSD drives running APFS.

I probably wouldn't want any crucial data on a conventional HDD that is running APFS.

I suspect Apple will want to deprecate HFS+ as a boot drive in favor of APFS. At that point, it had better be safe for any drive type.

The disk I used is a HDD.

This is how I was able to get a bootable partition to work with High Sierra and APFS.

1. I formated the partition as a Mac OS Extended (Journaled) partition.

2. I installed High Sierra on the partition. It would not boot.

3. I booted into the 10.13 recovery partition.

4. Opened Disk Utility.

5. Selected the macOS 10.13 volume and ran Edit > Convert to APFS.

6. Quit Disk Utility.

7. I then reinstalled macOS 10.13 using the recovery partition. I reveived an error message stating that the partion could not be made bootable.

8. I booted into the first partitiion on the disk (10.12) and opened System Preferences.

9. I went to the Startup Disk in System Preferences and the High Sierra partition was shown as bootable.

10. I selected the High Sierra partition and it booted without any problem and has been working without any problem ever since.

I can now boot into either partiton using the Option key during startup.

When you booted into 10.12 did the APFS volume show up in the startup drive preferences plane? I tried booting back into my internal hdd but it didnt recognize my external ssd (now APFS) in the startup disk preferences. Did you have to do anything to make it show up or was it there automaticaly?

disapointed that this is still happening on the final release..

Thanks for the post. This has solved the problem for me. I ran diskutil in Terminal a executed the apfs updatePreboot command twice. Although some errors were reported, it did the trick. After rebooting into the recovery partition once again I was able to successfully choose my startup disk. Excellent!

Yes there is, I just did it. I was distraught over this thinking a permanently did something to my Seagate 8TB Backup Plus drive...not so.

1. Open Disk Utility. On the left side,

2. Right click the APFS volume and select "Delete APFS Volume"...then wait,

3. Unplug the APFS volume and it disappears from the list.

4. Plug it back in. It will show up as a (Container disk). NowyYou can now format (erase) it to back Mac OS Extrended once again.

thanks

I tried pitchcircle's suggestion plus in a couple of different ways, applying it to the mounted volume, unmounted, by dev name , etc. and nothing worked. My error was that the OS couldn't run the bless command on the APFS drive to mnkae it bootable. As a final attempt, I deduced that somehow my iMac's firmware hadn't gotten updated to see the APFS mounts. It was an educated guess after pouring through the error logs and researching. But that was the problem! It was a relatively easy fix and I didn't loose any data. What I did was I booted from a 10.12 intall USB then proceeded to install 10.12 to a newly formatted HFS+ external USB drive. Once that was installed, I run through the 10.12 updates and then I upgraded to 10.13 (all this is happening on my external USB). Once I got it to 10.13, I downloaded the latest combo update and manually ran it. After that combo update ran and rebooted, Presto! My iMac booted directly to my previously unbootable APFS internal SSD. As a side note, the internal SSD was a Samsung Evo that replaced the original Apple HD.