M1 Mac mini boot from Thunderbolt drive failed upgrade to 11.1

[fai0]

Good day everyone, I am using a M1 Mac mini, booting from thunderbolt drive running with 11.0.1

When I try to upgrade to 11.1, it said download failed.

My Mac mini connect to internet via wire, and I am 200% sure my Internet connection works fine. All other upgrade like Xcode download and install was success without any error.

I reach out to Apple support on this, and after an hour of call of series of simple trouble shooting. They simply tell me to reinstall the OS. But my gut feeling tell me that seems related to boot from external drive.

Not sure anyone here face similar issue like me?

 

[Luposian]

Dunno how relevant this is, but I downloaded Big Sur 11.1 and it was (operative word... "WAS") in my Applications folder. Now, it's just... GONE. Doing a Spotlight search found nothing. It's like it was never there on my drive. But I couldn't have updated... wait a sec... I ran Update, to have my system up to 11.1 AFTER I downloaded it! But why would Apple remove that installer from my system, after the update? And, isn't that an invasion of my system, to remove files that I didn't authorize it to remove? It never even asked! It just poofed it! Now I'm having to download it all over again!

 

[Luposian]

Good day everyone, I am using a M1 Mac mini, booting from thunderbolt drive running with 11.0.1

When I try to upgrade to 11.1, it said download failed.

My Mac mini connect to internet via wire, and I am 200% sure my Internet connection works fine. All other upgrade like Xcode download and install was success without any error.

I reach out to Apple support on this, and after an hour of call of series of simple trouble shooting. They simply tell me to reinstall the OS. But my gut feeling tell me that seems related to boot from external drive.

Not sure anyone here face similar issue like me? View attachment 1695187

It's interesting that you were booted into macOS Big Sur 11.0.1 on an external TB3 drive, yet Apple won't update it. I suspect it's because it will only update the internal SSD. It won't update any "external" drive version. You have to manually do that, most likely. Download the 11.1 installer and manually update the TB3 drive. See if that works. But you'll need to be booted into the internal SSD to do that.

 

[fai0]

It's interesting that you were booted into macOS Big Sur 11.0.1 on an external TB3 drive, yet Apple won't update it. I suspect it's because it will only update the internal SSD. It won't update any "external" drive version. You have to manually do that, most likely. Download the 11.1 installer and manually update the TB3 drive. See if that works. But you'll need to be booted into the internal SSD to do that.

That is because I need 4TB of storage and no such option from Mac mini. I tried to use external drive for entire home directory but the whole experience is not good. Alternatively I can use alias or other technique to map some directory, but I am lazy to do that. As Mac support TB3 boot so I decide to use a 4TB TB3 SSD as boot drive, and the fact is the speed of TB3 SSD is about 2000 MB, pretty close to the internal SSD and I don't think I really notice that couple hundreds MB difference. And I have erased the internal disk for other use.

I tried do download the installer and the installer won't start the install on both disk. I understand that is kinda little white lab mice experience for Apple silicon. Now I am looking for some offline combo update of 11.1 and see will that work. Maybe the worse case is I really need to reinstall the OS and reconsider boot from internal drive. Or do something will push to the edge like fusion that two SSD together.

 

[Jouls]

Dunno how relevant this is, but I downloaded Big Sur 11.1 and it was (operative word... "WAS") in my Applications folder. Now, it's just... GONE. Doing a Spotlight search found nothing. It's like it was never there on my drive. But I couldn't have updated... wait a sec... I ran Update, to have my system up to 11.1 AFTER I downloaded it! But why would Apple remove that installer from my system, after the update? And, isn't that an invasion of my system, to remove files that I didn't authorize it to remove? It never even asked! It just poofed it! Now I'm having to download it all over again!

Did you download it via App Store? Because that has been normal procedure for all Mac OSes which are or were distributed through the App Store. You need to move it out of the Application folder before you run the updater.

 

[Luposian]

Did you download it via App Store? Because that has been normal procedure for all Mac OSes which are or were distributed through the App Store. You need to move it out of the Application folder before you run the updater.

My bad. I assumed once something was downloaded, it was yours to keep. Guess some places (Applications folder) can be invaded and others (anywhere else?) can't. But, I'll keep that in mind, from now on. Thanks. ?

 

[fai0]

After dig in a bit, should be related to the secure feature related to new Mac. The T2 chip basically not facilitate using external drive as primary drive. Guess I need to revert to using the internal drive as boot and external drive as data.

 

[Luposian]

After dig in a bit, should be related to the secure feature related to new Mac. The T2 chip basically not facilitate using external drive as primary drive. Guess I need to revert to using the internal drive as boot and external drive as data.

Lose not hope, dear fellow M1 Mac user. If you have an M1 Mac Mini, you can have a bootable external drive! Look for my most recent posts and you’ll see... I succeeded in doing it... finally! ?

 

[fai0]

Lose not hope, dear fellow M1 Mac user. If you have an M1 Mac Mini, you can have a bootable external drive! Look for my most recent posts and you’ll see... I succeeded in doing it... finally! ?

I have a bootable external drive, but just cannot upgrade that from 11.0.1 to 11.1

Can you run the upgrade?