Installing disaster - any ideas how to fix it, please?

[Freida]

Hello,

so I was on Mojave on the weekend and decided to update to Big Sur. Checked my apps and all were fine. Installed and got stuck at the last end of the bar. Tried recovery mode etc., reinstall etc. but nothing worked. Save mode did bring me the system but it didn't see any of the users and it acted kinda like a new computer. Long story short, I reverted to Mojave from CCC snapshot, updated my profile to have BETA available and now I'm on Monterey which works fine.
There is only one thing that kinda started with Big Sur but it still present and I don't know how to get rid off it without loosing data.

Basically, my HDD is divided into 2 partitions and I have no idea how to merge them. It looks as if one is with Mojave and the other with just Monterey (or something like that)

Any ideas please how to solve this and have just a single HDD as I had before all this mess, please?

Thank you so much

 

[Mike Boreham]

I have seen Disk Utility show wrong Partition/Volume info like that and it has corrected itself after relaunching Disk Utility. Have you tried restarting? Is the machine behaving apart from this?

I assume you realise that Big Sur will show two volumes (Macintosh HD unmounted, Macintosh HD - Data mounted) and a mounted snapshot, as in the last four lines of your screenshot. It is the top two lines that look wrong.

What does the partition tab show?

What does Disk utility say about the sizes of all those?

Does Startup Pref Pane show a second installation?

You could try running First Aid on each line.

 

[Freida]

I've restarted many times but I think this whole partition started with the Big Sur installation that didn't work so I've reformatted (i guess wrongly as I've left the partition there)

I have 1TB and its about main-950gb and secondary is about 50gb

This division is 'stealing' valuable space that I kinda need so I wonder if there is a fix.

I'll try running first aid on both, thank you.

I think I only ran it on one. Lets see

I have seen Disk Utility show wrong Partition/Volume info like that and it has corrected itself after relaunching Disk Utility. Have you tried restarting? Is the machine behaving apart from this?

I assume you realise that Big Sur will show two volumes (Macintosh HD unmounted, Macintosh HD - Data mounted) and a mounted snapshot, as in the last four lines of your screenshot. It is the top two lines that look wrong.

What does the partition tab show?

What does Disk utility say about the sizes of all those?

Does Startup Pref Pane show a second installation?

You could try running First Aid on each line.

 

[Mike Boreham]

It is very difficult to know what the situation is without being in front of the computer, but it is possible your Big Sur install is fine and all that has happened is that you have a second unwanted install which may be your old Mojave.

If the above is the case you may be able to delete the Mojave volume using the Partition tab in DU. (But DU may not permit this depending on the order of the partitions).

Does the startup disk Pref Pane show a Mojave?

I think on balance with the uncertainty of what is happening, and the potential for screwups I would suggest taking it to an Apple Store.

If you do try anything yourself make sure you have solid backups.

 

[Freida]

Yeah, thank you so much. I have CCC snapshot so that is good.
Yes, one disk is Monterey and one disk is Mojave. I think Apple store is not an option as they don't do support when beta systems are installed but I guess what I might try to do if it doesn't fix it eventually with release is to reformat the drive and restore from the snapshot but I would probably take it to the Apple store first just to see if thats the only solution, thank you.

It is very difficult to know what the situation is without being in front of the computer, but it is possible your Big Sur install is fine and all that has happened is that you have a second unwanted install which may be your old Mojave.

If the above is the case you may be able to delete the Mojave volume using the Partition tab in DU. (But DU may not permit this depending on the order of the partitions).

Does the startup disk Pref Pane show a Mojave?

I think on balance with the uncertainty of what is happening, and the potential for screwups I would suggest taking it to an Apple Store.

If you do try anything yourself make sure you have solid backups.

 

[Mike Boreham]

Yeah, thank you so much. I have CCC snapshot so that is good.
Yes, one disk is Monterey and one disk is Mojave. I think Apple store is not an option as they don't do support when beta systems are installed but I guess what I might try to do if it doesn't fix it eventually with release is to reformat the drive and restore from the snapshot but I would probably take it to the Apple store first just to see if thats the only solution, thank you.

CCC snapshots can enable a very rapid rollback to a previous recent state (but not a previous OS) but they are not quite a backup. CCC can clone the data volume onto a separate backup drive which can be used to completely restore your installation. CCC snapshots exist on the internal drive so if it fails or you erase it you don't have a backup. You can't erase a drive then restore from a snapshot, but you could restore using a clone on a backup drive.

It sounds like you may have a perfectly viable dual boot Monterey/Mojave setup. It may not be what you intended, but if it all works no harm done, except you are using some space for the Mojave installation. Does everything seem to be working properly? Have you tried booting from Mojave?

I think the Apple Store attitude to beta varies. Might be worth trying your local store if you wanted help removing Mojave.

 

[Freida]

I'm little bit confused about the "You can't erase a drive then restore from a snapshot" thing.

All I did was create a CCC clone on external drive, then formated the internal drive and then restored. All was fine. (I booted from the external drive first. So am I misreading what you meant? As what you described actually worked for me.

Yes, you are right, I have (in a way) a good solution. The only issue is the space but I might find a solution to that too.

For now, I'll wait for my ssd external drive to arrive (tomorrow) and then I will see what I want to do again.

Maybe I'll roll back to Mojave and wait it out longer. This experience was the first bad one I've had when updating in the past 15 years so I guess I'm little bit annoyed

Thank you so much and lets see if I solve this mystery

CCC snapshots can enable a very rapid rollback to a previous recent state (but not a previous OS) but they are not quite a backup. CCC can clone the data volume onto a separate backup drive which can be used to completely restore your installation. CCC snapshots exist on the internal drive so if it fails or you erase it you don't have a backup. You can't erase a drive then restore from a snapshot, but you could restore using a clone on a backup drive.

It sounds like you may have a perfectly viable dual boot Monterey/Mojave setup. It may not be what you intended, but if it all works no harm done, except you are using some space for the Mojave installation. Does everything seem to be working properly? Have you tried booting from Mojave?

I think the Apple Store attitude to beta varies. Might be worth trying your local store if you wanted help removing Mojave.

 

[Mike Boreham]

I'm little bit confused about the "You can't erase a drive then restore from a snapshot" thing.

All I did was create a CCC clone on external drive,

OK you created and restored from a CCC clone, which is not the same as a CCC Snapshot. More about CCC Snapshots here.

You can, and many people do (including me), use CCC to make Clones with CCC snapshots option turned off.

 

[Freida]

Hmm, still a bit confusing. All I did was the only option I saw which was "copy all files" and in the safety net i put "don't delete anything"

is that a snapshot then or a clone?

OK you created and restored from a CCC clone, which is not the same as a CCC Snapshot. More about CCC Snapshots here.

You can, and many people do (including me), use CCC to make Clones with CCC snapshots option turned off.

 

[Mike Boreham]

Hmm, still a bit confusing. All I did was the only option I saw which was "copy all files" and in the safety net i put "don't delete anything"

is that a snapshot then or a clone?

It's a clone. Read up on the link about snapshots, and Google for others. If you just use CCC out of the box you could be unaware of snapshots.

 

[Freida]

Ok, thank you.

It's a clone. Read up on the link about snapshots, and Google for others. If you just use CCC out of the box you could be unaware of snapshots.

 

[Fishrrman]

OP:

If you have a drive with two partitions, and you want to get rid of the partitions and have a drive with only ONE partition, then the easiest way is to:
- back up both partitions (I ALWAYS recommend cloned backups created with either SuperDuper or Carbon Copy Cloner)
- boot from the cloned backup
- ERASE the ENTIRE internal drive
- Rebuild the internal drive from the cloned backups.

If only one of the cloned backups was bootable, that's the one you want to "re-clone" from first.

Do that, get the internal drive bootable again.

Next, mount the backup of the "second partition" (assuming this wasn't bootable), and begin "manually copying" data from it to the single partition of the internal drive.

Note:
I think CCC has a feature to copy the contents of a cloned drive to another drive WITHOUT removing any data on the target drive. But I've never tried it.

Having said all this...
BE SURE you really want to "leave Mojave" before you do!
Mojave is one of the best OS releases Apple has done -- Catalina and Big Sur don't come close in my opinion.
Also, do you still have older and/or 32bit apps that you use?
The 32bit stuff "is lost" once you move "beyond" Mojave.

Having said THAT...
Even though my 2018 Mini has been running Mojave since new (and even though I have no plans to upgrade the internal drive beyond Mojave, EVER), I've been experimenting with later OS releases using external drives.

And I've found the new Monterey to be better than Big Sur, runs fast even though I don't care for the "iOS appearance".

If you want to be SURE that a later OS will work for you, get a cheap external USB3 SSD (you can get a 256gb SATA SSD for around $40 or even less), and set it up with your "upgrade OS" first.
If you like what you see, upgrade the internal.
If you DON'T like it, just erase the SSD for something else...

 

[08380728]

Hello,

so I was on Mojave on the weekend and decided to update to Big Sur. Checked my apps and all were fine. Installed and got stuck at the last end of the bar. Tried recovery mode etc., reinstall etc. but nothing worked. Save mode did bring me the system but it didn't see any of the users and it acted kinda like a new computer. Long story short, I reverted to Mojave from CCC snapshot, updated my profile to have BETA available and now I'm on Monterey which works fine.
There is only one thing that kinda started with Big Sur but it still present and I don't know how to get rid off it without loosing data.

Basically, my HDD is divided into 2 partitions and I have no idea how to merge them. It looks as if one is with Mojave and the other with just Monterey (or something like that)

Any ideas please how to solve this and have just a single HDD as I had before all this mess, please?

Thank you so much

Bad idea, probably you've screwed it all up now so not much point telling you what you should have done.
Anyway, why don't people name their sysboot volume to something other than 'Macintosh HD'??

Dude if I was you, i'd probably use SuperDuper, clone that Mojave volume to another SSD because hopefully the data in your user folders are going to be accessible, if so wikid.
I'd then, after knowing I can get access to my data on the Mojave clone, (eject it) make a USB installer of Monterey with gibMacOS: https://github.com/corpnewt/gibMacOS
Boot from that and erase the Mojave on your internal volume (the one you toasted) and rename it to something not Macintosh HD, (IDK macOS12 perhaps, probably cause less confusing for cloning apps) and install Monterey to it.
At setup create a user name the same as your Mojave username, log it in and then mount that Mojave clone, try first the Migration tool to see if it will pull your user data from the Mojave clone, if it does cool (will save you time) if not then you going have to manually migrate, yeah manually copy over all your apps or download new copies, copy your user folder data over, and setup system preferences manually...don't bring any other **** like preferences, keep it clean.

I used to take screenshots of each SYS pref and try replicate each setting.
I know it will take half a day or so but it has to be done, and don't delete you Mojave clone, keep it for a few weeks until you've made certain you've collected everything off it, I mean there will be things you'll remember at another time like your bash profile file and little things like that.


The changes to boot volumes from Mojave to Catalina are just asking for trouble. Once on a manually migrated system of Monterey then software upgrades should be less error prone, until Apple again does major changes to the boot volumes, it probably won't because they've ben trying to get macOS the same as iOS boot/install volume setup.

I had Mojave, backed it up, installed Catalina (ages ago) to a fresh disk to see what's going on and once I saw the installer splitting the volume into sys and data, that's when I held off until, well now and planned a fresh new Monterey install from scratch and manually migrated data over...all is running well now and SuperDuper makes a bootable clone on b5 Monterey on Intel.