Questions about a transition from Yosemite to Mojave

[Tommi14]

Hello,

These might be stupid questions, but I will ask them anyway:

I have two data hard drives formatted to Mac OS Extended (Journaled) and used earlier in macOS Yosemite. I also have two other hard drives which I have been using as backups of the above-mentioned hard drives. For the backup process I have been using Carbon Copy Cloner 4.

Some time ago, I upgraded to macOS Mojave. In addition, I am planning to start using Carbon Copy Cloner 5.

Can I simply plug in the two data hard drives in my Mac Pro and start using them in macOS Mojave? Or should I reformat them and copy the data back from the backups? Or will macOS Mojave do something to the hard drives if I put them in?

Also, can I continue using the backup hard drives in Carbon Copy Cloner 5? Or should I reformat them and make new backups from scratch?

Br,
Tommi

 

[KeesMacPro]

Can I simply plug in the two data hard drives in my Mac Pro and start using them in macOS Mojave?

Yes, no problem.

Or should I reformat them and copy the data back from the backups?

No, that's not necessary.

will macOS Mojave do something to the hard drives if I put them in?

No, when you install Mojave, the system disk default format is APFS (there are workarounds but that's another topic).
All other disks with the older format ( Mac OS extended) remain compatible without any modification.
So:
- disk with Mac OS : APFS
- disk with data: Mac OS extended or APFS

Also, can I continue using the backup hard drives in Carbon Copy Cloner 5? Or should I reformat them and make new backups from scratch?

Yes, no need to reformat.

 

[Tommi14]

Thanks, KeesMacPro, for very clear answers!

 

[KeesMacPro]

You're welcome Tommi14!

 

[Fishrrman]

OP:

Yes, you can use HFS+ drives with Mojave.

In fact, I recommend that you DO NOT reformat data drives to APFS, particularly if they are platter-based drives.

Leave them at HFS+.
They will run better.
Also, they are "repairable" in the sense that Mac utility apps can see them and work on them if required. With APFS... not so much.

 

[Tommi14]

Yes, Fishrrman, my plan is to keep the data hard drives at HFS+.

 

[Tommi14]

So, I have two data hard drives that I used earlier in macOS Yosemite. Some time ago, I did some hardware upgrades (CPU, GPU, NVMe) to my Mac Pro 2009 and upgraded to macOS Mojave. I did clean install and did not have the two data hard drives inside the Mac Pro during the macOS installation.

Now I noticed that when I am trying to create a new folder onto one of the data hard drives, Finder wants me to give my user password. Why is that? Is there some problem with the disk permissions? If I right-click the volume to get its information, under "Sharing & Permissions" it says that I can only read the disk. Ahead of "Read & Write" it says "Noudetaan..." in Finnish, which I think means "Fetching..." in English.

How can I correct this and regain the "Read & Write" permissions? The disks contain very important data which I do not want to lose. Of course, I have backups. But still, I would not like to mess up with the originals.

Br,
Tommi

 

[Fishrrman]

"How can I correct this and regain the "Read & Write" permissions?"

Try this. (no promises)
1. get to the finder
2. mount the "problem drive" on the desktop, so that you can see its icon
3. click on the drive icon ONE TIME to select it, then bring up the "get info" box (command-i)
4. at the bottom of get info, click the lock icon and enter your password
5. in "sharing and permissions", put a checkmark into "ignore ownership on this volume"
6. close get info.

Does this make any difference in how the drive behaves?

 

[Tommi14]

Thanks Fishrrman for your tip. I did not try it yet because I think I found the fundamental reason for the problem.

When I had macOS Yosemite in my Mac Pro, I had two user accounts: one admin account and one regular account. The regular user was the owner of the content of the two data hard drives.

Now, with macOS Mojave, I have just one user account. It has the same user name as the regular user in Yosemite but apparently different user id: the uid of the owner of the content of the data hdds is 502, while the uid of the user account in Mojave is 501.

So, would the solution to the problem be changing the ownership of the content of the hdds from uid 502 to uid 501? What would be the safest prosedure for doing this without affecting the content of the data hdds by any other way?

• By using chown command?
• Through the following procedure:
  1. Remove the data HDDs from the Mac Pro.
  2. Create a temporary admin account. This account would get uid 502, right?
  3. Delete the original account. Would this change the uid of the temporary account from 502 to 501?
  4. Recreate the original account. The original account would then get uid 502, right?
  5. Put back the data HDDs into the Mac Pro. Now, the content of the data HDDs is owned by the original account, right?
  6. Delete the temporary account while keeping the data HDDs inside the Mac Pro. Would this change the uid of the original account back to 501 and magically keeping the ownership of the content of the data hdds?
• By copying the content of the data hdds to new empty hdds? Would this correct the ownership of the data?

Br,
Tommi

 

[Fishrrman]

I predict that the advice I gave you in reply 8 above will solve your problems.
Why are you afraid to try it?

 

[Tommi14]

"Ignore ownership on this volume" sounds like this would circumvent the problem, not solve it. If I then just continue using the volume, create new folders and save new files, wouldn't the new files and folders be owned by a different user (501, my current uid) than the earlier files and folders (owned by 502)? This is not what I want.

 

[KeesMacPro]

"Ignore ownership on this volume" sounds like this would circumvent the problem, not solve it. If I then just continue using the volume, create new folders and save new files, wouldn't the new files and folders be owned by a different user (501, my current uid) than the earlier files and folders (owned by 502)? This is not what I want.

IMO (and personal experience) this is not an easy one.
User accounts and permissions issues can be a PITA .

If possible (I dont know the amount/size of data on the 2nd disk) I would do the following:

- boot and login to your main account (the one you want to have the correct permissions with for the 2nd drive)
- create a new folder inside your Home folder and copy all data you need/want from this 2nd disk to it
- open the new and filled folder with Command+I , unlock and set permissions as admin (if not automatically) ,
also click on the wheel and set to "apply to all folders inside"
This may take a while, so be patient
- reboot and check if permissions for the copied data are correct
- stay logged in to this account and erase the 2nd disk
- copy back all data you temporarily stored in the new folder to the 2nd disk

You could try to set permissions directly to the 2nd disk ,the same way as described above, but in my experience , success is not 100% guaranteed this way.
So if there's enough free space , I'd do it as described above.

 

[Fishrrman]

OP wrote:
""Ignore ownership on this volume" sounds like this would circumvent the problem, not solve it. If I then just continue using the volume, create new folders and save new files, wouldn't the new files and folders be owned by a different user (501, my current uid) than the earlier files and folders (owned by 502)? This is not what I want."

This will be my final post on this thread.
I've offered the solution and you refuse to try it, even for only a few files.

If you do what I have suggested, files copied from the source (external) volume will "come under the ownership" of the NEW accounts on the new Mac.

This is as easy as it gets.
Or... you can keep floppin' around like the proverbial fish out of water...

 

[Tommi14]

Thanks @KeesMacPro for your advises again.

Unfortunately, the main disk, where my home folder is located, is not large enough for the data. However, I will soon have some empty disks onto which I can copy the data and try what you suggested.

Would the terminal alternative for what you suggested in Finder for correcting the ownerships be something like below?

sudo find /Volumes/Pictures -user 502 -exec chown 501 {} \;

Br,
Tommi

 

[KeesMacPro]

NP; )

I think terminal is a magnificent and very powerful tool, but you have to be 200% sure what you're doing .
Although I use terminal for all kinds of things , I never used it for this specific issue.

This looks like you only want to edit the permissions for the folder "Pictures" and not an entire volume....(?)
In any case , I would do it in finder ,because it's completely transparent what you're editing.

If you prefer to do it in terminal, perhaps others can chime in .

You could also (before copying etc) just test my approach on 1 file first.
If all is ok , you could do the same with Command+I for the entire Volume and all is good.

 

[Tommi14]

"Pictures" is a volume that contains many folders that contains photos.

Yes, it is probably a good idea to try the approach at first for a few files only.