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How do I do an in place OS upgrade from El Capitan to High Sierra

My Mac mini is running El Capitan and I want to do an in place upgrade to High Sierra. I don't have a recovery partition. I have downloaded the High Sierra installer but what do I do - just run it? I usually wipe the drive and do a clean install but in this case it would mess with my Backblaze cloud backup so I just want to install the upgrade over my older one. Reason I don't upgrade to a more recent version of the OS is that I still run Photoshop CS5 and doubt that would work with newer OS versions. I have installed High Sierra on my 2nd internal hd and Photoshop works with that.

Mac mini, OS X 10.11

Posted on Jun 29, 2022 5:42 AM

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7 replies

Jun 29, 2022 8:01 AM in response to Nina Contini Melis

Yes just run it and follow the prompts. It my reboot more than once.


Do I have a Rescue Plan In-Place. This comprises having 3 Backups using 2 methods and 1 Off Site incase of Theft, Loss or Natural Disasters. A Time Machine Backup  is very useful and can be used to Revert to Previous Working macOS.


For additional purposes - two Tested Bootable Clones each to separate external drives. This is insurance incase the upgrades goes sideways.


At least one Tested Clone and / or Time Machine Backup should be Off - Site

How do I do an in place OS upgrade from El Capitan to High Sierra

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