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Help!
I thought this was smart but now I’m not so sure.
I am trying to upgrade my 2010 Mac Pro from El Capitan to High Sierra.
I thought it best to install it on a drive other than my main drive. Then boot off that drive and see how it goes. If all’s well, install it on the main drive.

So... I am installing it on a drive with the most space left, which is the drive with all my plugins andVIs.
I was assuming it wouldn’t erase anything and just add the new OS to it.

Now I’m starring at a blank screen for quite a while and wondering if I lost all my plugins.
Yikes!

Anyone know what’s going on?
Thanks.

You installed HS on the drive with all your plugins? But your plugins (although not your VI library contents) have to be on your main drive. So either you installed HS on your main drive, or your plugins are not on the startup drive where they belong. I don't understand what you did.

Uh-oh... I think the answer to your question is a YES

If there was no OS installed in your other disk, I'm afraid the installer wipes out the disk erasing anything you had in there (unless you installed the OS in a separate partition, but it doesn't sound like you did that).

Do you have a backup of your plugin/VIs disk?

Maybe Mike Halloran knows of some advanced trick or something to save you from reinstalling all what you lost... Concentrate really hard and chant and dance for that to happen!

bayswater wrote:You installed HS on the drive with all your plugins? But your plugins (although not your VI library contents) have to be on your main drive. So either you installed HS on your main drive, or your plugins are not on the startup drive where they belong. I don't understand what you did.

If I understood him correctly, he installed the OS in his VIs disk, and now he can't see them anymore 'cause they're gone.

Doesn't the OS installer give you some options about clean installing vs other options? And for god's sakes, doesn't it say, "You are about to complete erase the destination drive. OK?"

Hopefully this will make it cleare. My computer is still stuck on a gray screen so I don’t have acces to it now.

I had my libraries on another internal drive. Maybe I’m wrong about the plugins. Not sure. Do they get installed on the main drive? If so they’re still there.

I had 600 Gigs left on the libraries drive so I thought it was okay to install HS on that drive. Didn’t dawn on me that it might erase the whole drive since when you install on your main drive all your apps are untouched.

My thinking was I could install it on the secondary drive and startup from there just to see if all is well with my computer. If so, I’d do an install on the main drive. I didn’t have a backup of the libraries drive. Only the main drive.

So now I’m just looking at a gray screen for hours wondering if I should restart. And wondering if I lost everything that was on the 2nd drive.

Ouch. 600 GB will take a LONG time to re-install!!

Update.

I restarted with option held down. Picked my main drive. Started fine. Looks like the libraries are intact. There’s a new folder on the library drive labeled “libraries.” I’m assuming put there in the installation process.

So at least I’m running again. I’ll have to do more research on how to upgrade to HS before I attempt again. Mainly upgrading because I need the latest Final Cut Pro X. Otherwise I might not have tried this.

So you didn't lose anything?

I guess you did something right with the installer, because I did something similar to what you described in the OP long ago, and I remember losing everything...

Phew! Anyway, I'm glad you saved yourself from wasted reinstalling time!

Yeah. Been using DP and so far no problems. Visually it looks like everything's there.
Yes. I was really lucky.
Now I'll do some more homework.
Thanks.

I didn't think you'd lost anything. I install OS versions on drives with other things on them frequently for testing. I've used my VI library drive sometimes because it has the most space.

Your plugins have to be on the drive you startup from. You can get around that by using symbolic links to tell the OS that they in another place, although even then, the plugin might look for authorization information on the startup drive, and not the drive with the plugins.

When testing a new OS versions on another drive you should expect to install all the things you want to test, including plugins, and just leave them there. You can do something with DP, Logic, the OS and general utility apps and plugins with about 50-60G if you put all the libraries somewhere else and have symbolic links to them. I have a test partition of about 100G that has all the basic stuff I want to test at each OS upgrade. That way, I just have to install the new OS on it and see what happens when I start from it.

It's so much easier to update straight ahead on your main drive. I've never had a problem doing that in the past, but I was a bit concerned now that my computer is old and the new OS is more than one increment away. I know that going to Mojave would mean I have to get another graphics card. But to just go to HS I don't.

Thanks for the reply.

High Sierra will see other drives formatted in older OS.

Drives booted into older OS cannot see drives or partitions formatted APFS.

To switch from one to the other, you must Option Boot. Then re-set your boot drive in System Preferences (or it will revert on next start up).

Any questions?

Are you forced to format drives with that new format? Or can you keep them in the old format?

Are there strong reasons to go with the new format?

stubbsonic wrote:Are you forced to format drives with that new format? Or can you keep them in the old format?

High Sierra release version, it's difficult not to. Mojave gives you a choice.

stubbsonic wrote:Are there strong reasons to go with the new format?

Absolutely
viewtopic.php?f=4&t=64689

I have a test SSD with El Cap as some of my clients still have early 2009 Macs running El Cap. Pretty certain that since Apple is no longer supporting OS 10.11, they will be forced to update by school district IT managers ... if they can find the money. Once that happens, I'm done with anything older than High Sierra.