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I hope I am in the right place...

I am currently running OSX Mojave on my rather old Mac desktop. If I upgrade to Catalina, many of my apps (all MS products, etc.) quit working. However, the new Turbotax requires at least OSX Catalina. So, my plan:

  • Create a new volume on the current hard drive which is only 1/4 full.
  • Clone current Mojave to new volume using TimeMachine called Catalina (very slow!!)
  • Reboot on Catalina
  • Upgrade Mojave on new volume to Catalina (I am not sure this old Mac will go any further)
  • Now use TurboTax!

First of all, will this actually work? The "TimeMachine" part seems sketchy.

Second, is there a faster way to do the clone?

Third, have I completely lost my mind?

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  • If your computer smoothly runs Catalina, you will find it much simpler to upgrade / replace your apps and stay with one build. Works better.
    – anon
    Commented Jan 30, 2022 at 19:07
  • My answer below assumes the Mac is qualified for Catalina & doesn't need to involve dosdude or similar, of which I have no experience.
    – Tetsujin
    Commented Jan 30, 2022 at 19:12
  • 1. I tried my scheme. The volume created by Time Machine is not bootable. RATS!! 2. Replacing my apps is not really an option. Quicken will no longer work and the newer versions are not good. As far as I can tell, the MS products would all need to be repurchased and none of them are local and require licenses every year or something like that.
    – D. Scruggs
    Commented Jan 30, 2022 at 20:56

2 Answers 2

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Sounds a fair plan… however…

I wouldn't involve Time Machine in this; I'd use Carbon Copy Cloner

I would use two drives, not one, & disconnect Time Machine until you are absolutely certain the new setup is working [otherwise it will screw any attempt to re-use it on Mojave, or restore/migrate back to Mojave.]

So, hard clone [including Recovery partition] to a fresh drive.
Test it works [it should, CCC is good] by booting to it.
Update one or the other [with the safety disconnected] - you're safe now, you have a clone if anything goes pear-shaped.

Play with the new updated copy until you're happy. Keep the other disconnected & only use it to clone back if you hate it.
Watch for new files that might not translate well 'downhill' to Mojave. If you do need to clone back, you might gain back a few missed files by using CCC's 'safety-net' which will gather up any differences between the two.
See Ask Different - Revert to El Capitan for a similar issue. Note Catalina will be a worse recovery than El Cap - because the underlying APFS format will now separate out a new, inviolable system partition.

BTW… speed is not of the essence here. Safe restoration in case of disaster is by far the more important consideration. macOS is not designed to be able to revert 'downhill' so you need to be absolutely certain you have an escape plan if things go wrong.

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This is what I found out:

  • I couldn't seem to get Time Machine to make a bootable image on the same internal disk as the current disk. I don't know if Carbon Copy Cloner (CCC) would have done it. I gave up that effort.
  • I got CCC to make a bootable image on an external disk.
  • It actually booted! from the external disk
  • I don't know of any performance problems. Yet.
  • The CCC people were very helpful
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