Big Sur upgrade disaster

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rbplease
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Big Sur upgrade disaster

Post by rbplease »

The "upgrade" to Big Sur has been a disaster. I am communicating with you having booted from a Carbon Copy Cloner backup but don't know if you might be able to offer any guidance.

The new system was inoperable, spinning beach balls everywhere. AppleCare tried to help by re-installing the OS (worked) and then leaving me to migrate my data in from a Time Machine backup. Did not work -- said not enough room. Last I looked 50 GB of the 1 TB disk was available, so that is not acceptable, but now what?

I only want to upgrade to Big Sur because I permitted my iPhone to update not knowing it would render syncing with my Mojave Mac impossible. I want/need to be able to sync music with the iPhone, but on first look the Music app does not appear to keep track of song-play history, which is important to me; I am told it is not possible to restore the phone back to the previous iOS, so I feel out of options and believe it or not I am not optimistic AppleCare could or would help.
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Ronald P. Regensburg
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Re: Big Sur upgrade disaster

Post by Ronald P. Regensburg »

Very unfortunate.

What is now on your Mac? Just the OS with none of your own files and applications?
How much free space is available now?
How did you try to restore your data from the Time Machine backup?
rbplease
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Re: Big Sur upgrade disaster

Post by rbplease »

Yes, it is basically just the OS now on my Mac. (Odd exception: the Photos app purports to contain all images JUST from 2020, missing a couple decades there, but apparently a little piece of that data may have gotten migrated from the backup.)

As of now (booting from the CCC backup), available storage space on the Mac reads as 48.22 GB. (The CCC volume reads as 389.81 GB available.)

As suggested by AppleCare, I attempted to restore data from TM via the Migration Assistant, after AppleCare guided me through erasure of the Mac and commencing re-installation of Big Sur.
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Ronald P. Regensburg
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Re: Big Sur upgrade disaster

Post by Ronald P. Regensburg »

Migration can be done from either the Time Machine backup or the CCC clone.

Are your backups made before or after you created sufficient space to allow for the Big Sur upgrade? Your internal storage had barely enough room for the Big Sur upgrade after you created more free space.

When I have direct access to a Mac, I can usually solve most problems. But in this way I can't do much for you.

Maybe you can try (again?) one of the available restore options. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201314
I would try the option of re-installing Big Sur and then at first startup choose to migrate from one of your backups.

But if there is not enough room to migrate your files from the backup, this will not work. You can try making more free space on your CCC clone, then try again the restore and at first startup use the CCC clone as source for the migration.
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Ronald P. Regensburg
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Re: Big Sur upgrade disaster

Post by Ronald P. Regensburg »

The issue was resolved, see: viewtopic.php?p=70802#p70802
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