Monterey Reinstall on Mac Studio – Eighty Hours..?

[edsonneris]

I decided to reinstall Monterey on my two month-old Mac Studio because of myriad problems I’m having with it (endless SBOD, applications locking up and not responding, continually losing contact with external drives). From the Recovery Partition, it told me that the process would take over EIGHTY HOURS. The first time, the next morning, there was no signal going to the monitors, even after unplugging and replugging them into the Studio, turning them on and off. Turned the Studio on and off, and it wouldn’t start up. Progress bar got to 20% and wouldn’t go any further. Reinstall again, get the 80-hour message again. In the end it took about twenty hours, but still that’s an unacceptably long time for a reinstall… however, at the end of the process, the Studio still wouldn’t start up: the progress bar just stops at about 20%.

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I tried restoring from a Time Machine backup (from the Recovery Partition), but it said that I would have to use Migration Assistant to do that and to do that I’d need to reinstall Monterey…

I thought that after nursing my 12 year-old Mac Pro (patched, flashed, OpenCore, AC wi-fi upgrade, etc.) that the Mac Studio would be plain sailing but, if anything, it’s worse… downloads are glacially slow, even with a wi-fi 6 mesh system: I fired up the Mac Pro again today, and downloads that are estimated at MONTHS on the Studio came down in minutes on the Pro. I fired the Pro up to download the Monterey installer to make a bootable USB, because the Recovery Partition is a nightmare…

Has anyone else had similar experiences? I can’t believe how bad this Mac Studio is…

Have you tried RESTORE using Apple Configurator? In this process you will need to use a second Mac connected using a Thunderbolt cable.

More info: https://support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/apple-configurator-mac/apdd5f3c75ad/mac

 

[spetznatz]

Have you tried RESTORE using Apple Configurator? In this process you will need to use a second Mac connected using a Thunderbolt cable.

More info: https://support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/apple-configurator-mac/apdd5f3c75ad/mac

Thanks, it does say in the article that you can use a USB-A to C cable, but I’ll need someone to help me with the key combinations… just the other day, the Studio started spontaneously shutting down and restarting about 3-4 times a day, although it appears to have stabilised, now. It’s also developed the behaviour that, when an app becomes unrespensive, you can kill the process from the Process Manager, but the app stays open and locked up. The only way out of this is a restart.

I’m beginning to think the bloody thing’s haunted…

 

[edsonneris]

Thanks, it does say in the article that you can use a USB-A to C cable, but I’ll need someone to help me with the key combinations… just the other day, the Studio started spontaneously shutting down and restarting about 3-4 times a day, although it appears to have stabilised, now. It’s also developed the behaviour that, when an app becomes unrespensive, you can kill the process from the Process Manager, but the app stays open and locked up. The only way out of this is a restart.

I’m beginning to think the bloody thing’s haunted…

This process has already helped me to save a Mac Mini M1. Using a Thunderbolt cable the process completes in 10 minutes. I've never tried using another cable. In this process the Firmware is updated, then the SSD is completely erased, and then the latest compatible version is installed.

 

[spetznatz]

I think I’ve solved it… purely by accident: in my YottaMaster external enclosure I had a RAID 0 array made up of 2 x 2TB SSDs. It was too large for my iTunes library (2TB would be more than enough) and I needed to replace the SSD in my Mac Mini (it had died). So, I deleted the RAID array and… all my problems went away: all the apps not responding, applications not relaunching after being force-quit, external drives spontaneously unmounting, Disk Utility not seeing any disks, file copies hanging on ‘Calculating Time’, Finder not showing folder contents (stuck on ‘Loading’), Time Machine spontaneously opening on restart… it’s all gone.

it’s been running for two days, now, with nary a problem 😁. But it’s weird that a RAID array (created with Disk Utility, no less) would cause so many problems…

Thanks for all your help along the way 👍