# Before I upgrade to LR CC Classic on my Mac running El Capitan



## hassiman (Oct 23, 2017)

Operating System:LR El capitan on a New MacPro

Lightroom Version: latest before the release of Classic
_(Please go to Help menu > System Info to double check the exact version number)_

Question or Description of Problem:I am just about to upgrade to the new "Classic" version of LR CC Classic,
I have only my OS and programs on my NMP's SSD and my LR catalog and image files live on a CalDigit T3 external Thunderbolt 2 drive.
I was wondering if anyone with an external data solution has experienced any problems upgrading to Classic and if the catalog data conversion process has gone smoothly?

I will of course BU before proceeding... but just checking!

Thanks,

Rich


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## clee01l (Oct 23, 2017)

I've heard of very few issues with Macs.   However, Before you upgrade to Lightroom Classic, I would recommend that you upgrade your OS to MacOS 10/.13 "High Sierra". 
Your Post specs and your Lightroom User profile raise some questions.  If you have a new Mac Pro, why is it running an Operation system that was discontinued well over a year ago?
Also when you say: "latest before the release of Classic". Do you mean LR6.13 or LRCC2015.13?  Your Lightroom User Profile still reads LR5.7.


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## hassiman (Oct 23, 2017)

clee01l said:


> I've heard of very few issues with Macs.   However, Before you upgrade to Lightroom Classic, I would recommend that you upgrade your OS to MacOS 10/.13 "High Sierra".
> Your Post specs and your Lightroom User profile raise some questions.  If you have a new Mac Pro, why is it running an Operation system that was discontinued well over a year ago?
> Also when you say: "latest before the release of Classic". Do you mean LR6.13 or LRCC2015.13?  Your Lightroom User Profile still reads LR5.7.


Dear Cletus,

One of my main beefs with Apple is their need to upgrade their OS every year.  No sooner have all the rough spots been fixed out come a new version.  Sierra is one thing but High Sierra changes the HFS+ to the new AFS file system.... that has been something I have been avoiding.  How easily did that upgrade go for you?  Does this mean I will need to re-format my external drive to the new AFS format?


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## Jim Wilde (Oct 23, 2017)

FWIW, LR Classic should run perfectly fine on El Capitan. That's what I'm still using....every time I get round to updating the OS jumps again!


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## clee01l (Oct 23, 2017)

hassiman said:


> Dear Cletus,
> 
> One of my main beefs with Apple is their need to upgrade their OS every year.  No sooner have all the rough spots been fixed out come a new version.  Sierra is one thing but High Sierra changes the HFS+ to the new AFS file system.... that has been something I have been avoiding.  How easily did that upgrade go for you?  Does this mean I will need to re-format my external drive to the new AFS format?


Upgrading from Sierra to High Sierra was transparent.  My iMac has a Fusion drive which does not yet support the AFS filesystem.  It is still HFS+.  My MBP has an SSD. After upgrading the iMac with not issues, I upgraded the MBP.  The upgrade from Sierra to High Sierra was also transparent.  The primary disk (SSD) automatically converted to AFS and to this day I am not sure how Apple manages to do it and keep all of my apps and data in place.  Not only was I unaware of the Filesystem change, it was as quick, perhaps quicker update than the iMac. I have 10 external drives attached to my iMac.  They are still running HFS+ Just to see what would happen, I took one of my empty HDDs (not Fusion) and reformatted it as AFS. The Disk Utility took about as long to reformat to AFS as it does to format HFS+. 
MacOS  reads and writes AFS, HFS+, ExFAT and MS-DOS(FAT)
Apple is on a 2 year upgrade cycle for major and minor upgrades. High Sierra is a minor upgrade to Sierra and Sierra was a major upgrade El Capitan which was a minor upgrade to Yosemite.

With the conversion of my SSD to AFS, I gained some disk pace since AFS is more efficient at storing data.


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## clee01l (Oct 23, 2017)

hassiman said:


> Dear Cletus,
> 
> One of my main beefs with Apple is their need to upgrade their OS every year.  No sooner have all the rough spots been fixed out come a new version.  Sierra is one thing but High Sierra changes the HFS+ to the new AFS file system.... that has been something I have been avoiding.  How easily did that upgrade go for you?  Does this mean I will need to re-format my external drive to the new AFS format?


Upgrading from Sierra to High Sierra was transparent.  My iMac has a Fusion drive which does not yet support the AFS filesystem.  It is still HFS+.  My MBP has an SSD. After upgrading the iMac with no issues, I upgraded the MBP.  The upgrade from Sierra to High Sierra was also transparent.  The primary disk (SSD) automatically converted to AFS and to this day I am not sure how Apple manages to do it and keep all of my apps and data in place.  Not only was I unaware of the Filesystem change, it was as quick, perhaps quicker update than the iMac. I have 10 external drives attached to my iMac.  They are still running HFS+ Just to see what would happen, I took one of my empty HDDs (not Fusion) and reformatted it as AFS. The Disk Utility took about as long to reformat to AFS as it does to format HFS+.
MacOS  reads and writes AFS, HFS+, ExFAT and MS-DOS(FAT)
Apple is on a 2 year upgrade cycle for major and minor upgrades. High Sierra is a minor upgrade to Sierra and Sierra was a major upgrade El Capitan which was a minor upgrade to Yosemite.

With the conversion of my SSD to AFS, I gained some disk pace since AFS is more efficient at storing data.


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## Johan Elzenga (Oct 24, 2017)

I have exactly the same experience. Upgrading the MacBook Pro is as quick and painless as any other major system upgrade, and when the upgrade is done your disk is AFS.


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## hassiman (Oct 24, 2017)

I just talked with a good friend who is the head engineer with CalDigit.  He works quite closely with Cupertino and Intel.  He told me that the AFS file system is specifically for SSDs.  A nermal HD will not be affected.  Ergo my external HD will be fine.  When I want to use SSDs in it I can format the drives and used RAID 1 to copy over my catalog data....


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## clee01l (Oct 24, 2017)

hassiman said:


> I just talked with a good friend who is the head engineer with CalDigit.  He works quite closely with Cupertino and Intel.  He told me that the AFS file system is specifically for SSDs.  A nermal HD will not be affected.  Ergo my external HD will be fine.  When I want to use SSDs in it I can format the drives and used RAID 1 to copy over my catalog data....


Your friend is mistaken.  A regular HDD can be formatted as AFS (I have one).  The only thing not supported with 10.13.0 are Apple's Fusion drives which are a SDD/HDD hybrid.  I expect these will be supported in a dot release of High Sierra.  If you have a HDD formatted with data, Apple will not reformat it automatically like it does the Primary SDD.  Reformating to AFS is no different that formatting to any other filesystem.  Reformatting erases data and yet an install of High Sierra on the primary drive manages to reformat the SSD to AFS without data loss.


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