How long *should* Capitan install take?

[Rantipole]

My install is taking around 3 or 4 hours at this point.

I've shut down, restarted, and the install appears to have started again where it left off. The status bar is around 80-90% done and has been there most of the time, pre- and post-reboot.

Anyway, I've done a lot of searching in the forums and elsewhere and seen a lot of discussion of various long installs. 2, 3, 8 hours or more.

What I want to know is: how long SHOULD it take? I have an older mac, but how long would it take in a newer model? 1/2 hour? 1 hour? Anyone know?

 

[Rantipole]

Well, it took around 8 hours for me, maybe a little longer. I am on an older mac. Still, it would be interesting to hear long it should take.

 

[tom vilsack]

2010 11" base macbook air,clean install from usb...20 min

 

[simonsi]

Early 2011 13" w/SSD, upgrade from Yosemite, 30min give or take once downloaded.

 

[simonsi]

....and a further 20mins after download to update to 10.11.1 just now

 

[jk73]

After the download (~50 minutes), it took about 20 minutes for me on a 2012 rMBP.

 

[Rantipole]

How much RAM do all you 20/30 minute people have? I only have 4GB. I wonder if that was the problem.

EDIT: Just saw SSD and clean install. No fair, you guys!

 

[F1Mac]

About 20+ minutes here, not including download time, and regardless of the Mac model (see my sig...)

 

[GuilleA]

About 30 minutes. I did a fresh install, no upgrade. 8 hours seems excessive. Are you using a HDD or an SSD? If HDD, bad sectors could be the cause.

 

[simonsi]

How much RAM do all you 20/30 minute people have? I only have 4GB. I wonder if that was the problem.

EDIT: Just saw SSD and clean install. No fair, you guys!

It wasn't any different to any of the upgrades I had done over previous OS versions tbh. I can see the SSD speeding things up a tad but the upgrade time has been the same on my 16GB MBP, 4GB MBA and 8GB iMac...I agree that you may have a disk issue.

 

[F1Mac]

How much RAM do all you 20/30 minute people have? I only have 4GB. I wonder if that was the problem.

EDIT: Just saw SSD and clean install. No fair, you guys!

I only have an SSD in my mac mini - my Mac Pros are still with HDs (soon to be replaced by SSDs though ). My 1,1 has 16GB, 5,1 has 40GB, mini has 8GB. No clean install either.

 

[golfnut1982]

My download was slow at first. I canceled it and rebooted. Started it again, went to eat dinner, came back about 30 min later, all done.

 

[hallux]

My MBP took 30 minutes. I didn't pay attention to how long the Mini took.

 

[DotCom2]

I have a 27 retina iMac late 2014. 3TB Fusion.
It's been 2 hours downloading now and only about 70% downloading.
I'm getting worried.
I'm on 75/75 Verizon Fios via Ethernet.
This is not making sense to me.

 

[AZhappyjack]

My install is taking around 3 or 4 hours at this point.

I've shut down, restarted, and the install appears to have started again where it left off. The status bar is around 80-90% done and has been there most of the time, pre- and post-reboot.

Anyway, I've done a lot of searching in the forums and elsewhere and seen a lot of discussion of various long installs. 2, 3, 8 hours or more.

What I want to know is: how long SHOULD it take? I have an older mac, but how long would it take in a newer model? 1/2 hour? 1 hour? Anyone know?

The install file was over 5GB, so you have the download time. That alone will be completely subjective, based on your network speed, server traffic, etc. If I recall, the download took me some 2 hours or so. One thing that I've heard was helpful for a really slow download is to cancel the download and then start over in the App Store. The download will actually resume at the point it was cancelled, and is reported to run much quicker from that point (YMMV).

The actual install was about half an hour, once the download was completed.

 

[DotCom2]

The install file was over 5GB, so you have the download time. That alone will be completely subjective, based on your network speed, server traffic, etc. If I recall, the download took me some 2 hours or so. One thing that I've heard was helpful for a really slow download is to cancel the download and then start over in the App Store. The download will actually resume at the point it was cancelled, and is reported to run much quicker from that point (YMMV).

The actual install was about half an hour, once the download was completed.

OMG! After 3 hours of downloading and still going I see this post. I paused, waited a minute and resumed and wow, it started going really fast and finished!
THANK YOU FOR YOUR VERY HELPFUL POST.

 

[Mcmeowmers]

30 minutes on 2015. The recent update took almost the same time actually!

 

[Rantipole]

About 30 minutes. I did a fresh install, no upgrade. 8 hours seems excessive. Are you using a HDD or an SSD? If HDD, bad sectors could be the cause.

Should I run some sort of optimization before updating to 10.11.1?

 

[c8rlo]

~45min., upgraded via App Store. Mid-2010 13" MBP 8GB Ram & 256GB SSD

 

[Weaselboy]

Should I run some sort of optimization before updating to 10.11.1?

Not a bad idea to use Disk Utility to run first aid on the disk before any updates. This will show you any disk errors.