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When High Sierra came out, I opted to not update my filesystem version, out of caution. Now that it’s been out for a while, and my MacBook Pro has had no issues, I’d like to upgrade my MacBook Pro 5,1 to APFS.

I naively tried by booting into recovery mode, launching Disk Utility, and selecting “Update to APFS.” Good thing I just backed up, because this made my machine no longer boot.

Searching around, it appears that High Sierra included a firmware update that let machines boot from APFS volumes, which would explain why my machine would no longer boot after updating the boot volume.

I can’t find a way to retroactively apply that firmware patch, and Google is failing me. My backup plan is to download a High Sierra installer and try installing it from scratch, and hope I get a chance to select APFS and the firmware update. But I’d like a smoother path, if anyone has one.

Giacomo1968
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Dylan McNamee
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    This outdated, no longer updated page from Apple comes close: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201518 but the .pkg firmware installer won't run on my Mojave installation. The "downgrade to High Sierra" option is looking like what I need to do. – Dylan McNamee Oct 10 '19 at 22:45
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    It turned out my machine was booting fine, but the updated video card wasn't showing the "boot options" screen. So I reinstalled the original graphics card, and was able to use the GUI to install APFS and macOS Catalina. – Dylan McNamee Oct 12 '19 at 01:09
  • The Mac Pro 5,1 is not Catalina-compatible, without using the DOSdude patch, even if you have a Metal-capable GPU. High Sierra shouldn't have let you install in the first place without the firmware update, nor would Mojave… so the entire question becomes unclear. – Tetsujin Oct 19 '19 at 12:14
  • One of my attempts included DOSDude, but once I could boot with the Radeon RX580, I didn't think DOSDude was involved. I could have been wrong. In any case, my 5,1+RX580 is running Catalina just great now. – Dylan McNamee Oct 19 '19 at 18:34
  • You must still have the hack in place, then, because the 5,1 is not Catalina-capable, even with a Metal GPU. 6,1 is the only Mac Pro that can run it, according to Apple. None of the 5,1s here have the option… not that I'd want it, tbh ;-) – Tetsujin Oct 19 '19 at 18:38

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Years later (2022), thanks to Open Core Legacy Patcher, this 12-year-old system is running macOS Monterey just fine, even showing video during the boot process.

One thing I did have to do was follow the instructions here about updating my system's firmware. That involved downloading macOS Mojave, but was pretty straightforward.

Dylan McNamee
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