High Sierra brought the new Apple File System to replace the existing Hierarchical File System for our hard drives. Mac’s have custom firmware to handle error handling for APFS and custom hackintoshes do not, which can lead to unforseen problems in the future.
If you don’t want to use the new Apple File System you can opt out of it by using a script to disable it when installing High Sierra. This only applies to people installing High Sierra on SSD’s and NVME drives as convential spinning HHD’s will remain as HFS, a decision Apple decided to make, because of poor performance of APFS on HDD’s.
Avoid the version
To avoid the APFS conversion when updating to High Sierra from an already existing version of macOS you trigger the installer with a terminal command instead of through the normal High Sierra Install app when it pops up after downloading.
To avoid being forced to use APFS during a fresh install of macOS High Sierra you edit a key-value during the second part of the install to stop the conversion to APFS by changing ConvertToAPFS from true to false.
I recommend people stay away from APFS for now until the compatibility issues with APFS are understood and workarounds are developed.
Prepare the EFI for High Sierra
If you have a hackintosh you will need to prepare the EFI before you install High Sierra, otherwise you can skip this step. You need to update all the kexts files in your EFI partition you can do that using the Kext Page.
Also for those of you that are going to use the iGPU on your CPU. If you have a th Gen Intel 6XX iGPU you need to open your config.plist and add the boot flag -disablegfxfirmware under Boot/Arguments.
Prevent APFS on High Sierra Fresh Install
To prevent the APFS conversion when fresh installing High Sierra an extra step is required between the first and second part of the hackintosh install by editing a key-value in a XML file called minstallconfig.xml through Terminal by booting the first part of the installer twice.
1. Repeat Boot OS X Install from Install macOS High Sierra
- Through the Clover Menu select Boot OS X Install from Install macOS High Sierra like you normally would for the first part of the installer.
- Go through the steps to start the Installer after it finishes loading up.
- When the first part of the install finishes and your back at the Clover Menu select Boot OS X Install from Install macOS High Sierra again like in step 1
2. Disable APFS with Terminal
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Open Terminal from the Utilities drop down menu at the top.
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Replace “disk_drive_name” in line 2 with whatever your boot drive is named when you use ls -1 /Volumes to get the names. Input the following one line at a time in Terminal pressing enter after each line is typed:
ls -1 /Volumes
cd /Volumes/disk_drive_name
cd “macOS Install Data”
vi minstallconfig.xml -
In this example as listed using ls -1 /Volumes my drive_name is “Hackintosh”
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minstallconfig.xml contents will now populate in terminal…
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Find this code:
1
2
<key>ConvertToAPFS</key><true/> -
Use the arrow keys to highlight the ‘t‘ in
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Press the DELETE key on your keyboard 4 times carefully only removing t, r, u, e
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Press the letter
ion your keyboard to enter insert mode -
Type in false
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Press the ESC key
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The result should look like this:
<key>ConvertToAPFS</key><false/> -
Type
:wqto save or type:q!if you messed up and want to start over.
3. Continue Installer
Following the steps above properly will ensure you can remain on a Hierarchical File System (HFS). You can now continue the installer normally.
- Close Terminal when finished with everything
- Restart computer using the silver menubar at the top.
- Boot to Clover Menu to proceed with second part of the installer.
- Select Boot macOS Install from …