How to migrate all my data from one external ssd to another, but not the OS

[reppresident]

Thanks. I just checked the boot preferences and saw that the Monterey disk was selected.

even tho, select the monterey disk again and reboot. should work

 

[MichaelWV]

Do an nvram clean. Then try to boot from the usb efi on boot picker holding option key at boot, probably then monterey will boot normaly. from the mac preferences, select the monterey vol as next boot disk and reboot ( without the usb ). it might work this way.

Hi again. I reset the nvram/pram. It didn't work. Sorry. I should add that Monterey boots up in Safe Mode fine, but that's ultimately no use, of course.

I feel that it's connected to Big Sur, but I don't know.I also reselected Monterey in the startup disk. Did nothing; it keeps booting to the internal HD, even with Big Sur. Have to select the external SSD's them from the efi for them to work.

There's a troubleshooting section on the OCLP site, which deals with stuck boots, but it's beyond me. I don't have technical savvy to do it. I know there are others with similar issues, so I’ll to look more into it and report back. Never had so much trouble with a Mac OS.

Sooner or later I guess it will get resolved. Many thanks for your help so far. At least i know that Migration Assistant works now, which was the point of this post.

-m

 

[MichaelWV]

I found the answer! Here's how I did it, after some research. Thanks to OCLP's troubleshooting section I managed to finally get any OS to boot up, which was previously stuck at approximately 50%. Please look at the attached. I hope this will help anyone else who has issues of this nature.

At one point I was really giving up. I even tried to install Ventura, but that stuck too. I did everything: PRAM/NVRAM, Safe boot, disk repair. Nothing worked, until I followed the OCLP advice. Basically, it was to do with the kexts, located in the /Library/Extensions folder

The only weird thing was, that even putting back the offending kexts (the Wacom) allowed me to boot up quickly. This I do not understand. Another small issue I experienced was my OWC Thunderbay 8 wouldn't mount. I just reinstalled the driver and it works perfectly. Not sure why this happened, but it's a flag for anyone with this challenge.

This, along with reppresident's great advice, finally solved my issues.

Thanks to all.

-m