Catalina installation issue on Mac Pro

[El_Kabong]

I bought a 2012 Mac Pro and I was transferring and cloning my data to new hard drives in the computer.
Two of the hard drives had operating systems and one I was able to upgrade to Catalina OK.
The other one I've tried to install Catalina twice but the bar under the Apple symbol goes to about 90% and then it appears to freeze. (It's a new HD).
I'm not sure how long is the "norm" for installation as the first HD took about 4-5 hours. Second HD I allowed it to install overnight and it looked as it was frozen.

Any clues?

 

[BLUEDOG314]

So if you bought a device that had OSes installed on multiple drives, I wouldn't waste time trying to upgrade them. If you have access to another machine, make yourself a bootable Mojave (the farthest I believe that devices can go) installer and boot from that and wipe the drives then install a clean Mojave. Also, when you say that the HD is new, is it a spinner or SSD and did you install it yourself? in a 2012 device with traditional HDDs I would be sure to run something like SMART Utility to see if there are any bad sectors. All that said, on a system with a healthy drive I don't think a clean install should take over an hour. The only thing I can think of that would hold up an install like that would be the OS install flashing new firmware. I have personally had to start installs over when jumping multiple years of firmware, for example maybe you have 10.9 on a system and decide to use a USB installer to go to 10.15. Sometimes it just hangs and its not the actual install per se, but it gets stuck on the firmware.

TL;DR: Make usb installer, wipe drives and try again. Make sure drives are healthy if you didn't install them all yourself.

 

[El_Kabong]

I'm not much of an expert on computers. Basically, I just learn what I need to know.

My 2012 device came with one HD. On my old device, two HD had operating systems and I bought two new Seagate HDs. (I've had bad experiences with Western Digital HDs). They are the "spinner models" and I restored/cloned the two HDs from the 2006 MacPro to them. (I have some software on them that would have been a hassle to reinstall). So I didn't do a clean install, I did an upgrade.

One new HD upgraded OK. The other one had the issue. I didn't think it should take that long to upgrade. I wiped it, cloned from the old HD, and tried again and same issue. However, it shows that it is OS Catalina now, but I haven't tried to restart from it yet.

So now I will investigate firmware issues. I also didn't know I could install from a USB as I had installed from the HD.
Eventually I want to upgrade to High Sierra

Thanks for the help Bluedog.

 

[matram]

Agree with @BLUEDOG314 that it makes most sense to start fresh with a clean install of Mojave and then copy over files and data from your old system.

Cloning a full disk from an older system would result in an OS that does not have the right drivers for the newer system. I do noth think that will work.

 

[El_Kabong]

Problem with a clean install is that I won't be able to reinstall my Adobe software. I purchased it before Adobe started to charge by the month and its a teacher's version and I don't teach anymore.

Also, one HD full disk installed ok where as the other is having the problem.