MacOS – install both High Sierra and Mavericks on the Mac

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I have a 2013 MacBook Pro with both Mavericks and El Capitan installed (each on their own partition).

I now want to use Mavericks and High Sierra, each on their own partition.

Since High Sierra uses the APFS file system, will this prove to be a problem? Will it conflict with the HFS format use in Mavericks?

If there would be a conflict, how could I use both High Sierra and Mavericks on the one MacBook?

Best Answer

You do not have to use APFS to run High Sierra. Although, I believe if your internal drive is a SSD, then the High Sierra installer will try to convert the existing El Capitan partition and El Capitan Recovery partition to a APFS container partition.

Upgrading El Capitan to High Sierra should not effect Mavericks.

Note: Mojava (macOS 10.14) will be released on September 24, 2018

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Partition problem with APFS containers in macOS High Sierra

Well for anyone interested in a solution, it's now possible.

I've followed this guide and managed to reclaim all available space and resize my main partition back to full disk space.

Thanks everyone for help and suggestions.

MacOS – How to prevent conversion to APFS on High Sierra install

It should work by exiting any High Sierra installer GUI and starting the install from the command line:

/Applications/Install\ macOS\ High\ Sierra.app/Contents/Resources/startosinstall --converttoapfs NO

Further install options can be obtained by using the --usage argument:

Arguments
--applicationpath, a path to copy of the OS installer application to start the install with.
--license, prints the user license agreement only.
--agreetolicense, agree to license the license you printed with --license.
--rebootdelay, how long to delay the reboot at the end of preparing. This delay is in seconds and has a maximum of 300 (5 minutes).
--pidtosignal, Specify a PID to which to send SIGUSR1 upon completion of the prepare phase. To bypass "rebootdelay" send SIGUSR1 back to startosinstall.
--converttoapfs, specify either YES or NO on if you wish to convert to APFS.
--installpackage, the path of a package to install after the OS installation is complete; this option can be specified multiple times.
--usage, prints this message.
--volume, path to the target volume.

Sources report that the command (in the Beta version) doesn't do anything on the first execution but on the second.

Best Answer

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Partition problem with APFS containers in macOS High Sierra

MacOS – How to prevent conversion to APFS on High Sierra install

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