System HD no longer bootable after converting to AFPS

[moosed]

Hi.

I have been running Mojave on my 2013 5k Imac and decided to update to Catalina however when i tried to run the installer it said my drive needed to be AFPS for it to install, which it is not. I did some googling and found a way to convert my system drive to AFPS via disk utility. I did this, the process went fine according to disc utility however when i reboot my pc to try and load back into the system drive it just keeps going back to recovery mode.

If i hold the 'alt' key on start to select a drive to boot into i have only have recoverable partition to choose from, not the newly convertered system drive. If i load up disk utlity within recovery mode the drive is still listed under 'internal' and appears ok but if i try and select it as the disk to startup from I get this message

“Running bless to place boot files failed”



Everything is backed up so im not stressing too much but i feel like this should be fixable without me having to reformat and use time machine.

Any advice is welcome

edit: I tried the below fix which supposedly fixes it but when i run that command in terminal it cant complete the process and says Error: - 69737: Unable to find boot helper partition

• Boot into recovery using Command+R at startup
• Go to Utilities > Terminal
• Use this command to update the Preboot section of the disk to APFS
  diskutil apfs updatePreboot /Volumes/Macintosh\ HD/
  Replace “/Macintosh\ HD/” with the name of your boot volume

 

[smokerz]

Hi.

I have been running Mojave on my 2013 5k Imac and decided to update to Catalina however when i tried to run the installer it said my drive needed to be AFPS for it to install, which it is not. I did some googling and found a way to convert my system drive to AFPS via disk utility. I did this, the process went fine according to disc utility however when i reboot my pc to try and load back into the system drive it just keeps going back to recovery mode.

If i hold the 'alt' key on start to select a drive to boot into i have only have recoverable partition to choose from, not the newly convertered system drive. If i load up disk utlity within recovery mode the drive is still listed under 'internal' and appears ok but if i try and select it as the disk to startup from I get this message

“Running bless to place boot files failed”



Everything is backed up so im not stressing too much but i feel like this should be fixable without me having to reformat and use time machine.

Any advice is welcome

edit: I tried the below fix which supposedly fixes it but when i run that command in terminal it cant complete the process and says Error: - 69737: Unable to find boot helper partition

• Boot into recovery using Command+R at startup
• Go to Utilities > Terminal
• Use this command to update the Preboot section of the disk to APFS
  diskutil apfs updatePreboot /Volumes/Macintosh\ HD/
  Replace “/Macintosh\ HD/” with the name of your boot volume

I would think going to APFS erased the drive and that's why there is nothing on it to boot from.

 

[Fishrrman]

OP:

Since you're "backed up", looks like the best option may be:
1. Boot to INTERNET recovery (not the recovery partition)
2. Erase the ENTIRE internal drive (to APFS with GUID partition format if that's what you want)
3. Connect the TM backup and restore your data from it using setup assistant.

You didn't tell us which OS you were using before you tried to convert.
If it's Mojave or High Sierra, I'd prefer them to Catalina.
Too many folks reporting too many problems with Catalina right now...