Big Sur - clean rental - Migration Assistant useless - HELP!!!

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Level 1

15 points

Big Sur - clean rental - Migration Assistant useless - HELP!!!

Hi all,

So, after going months with Big Sur "update" on my MacBookPro 15" late-2018 model I decided with all of the problems, the sluggishness, the very crappy response and countless issues with software not playing happy with the OS - the list is long... see below... I decided to do a fresh, clean, wipe and install.

My thinking was - maybe the "update" to Big Sur from Catalina was not the best scenario. In fact, I think from now on I will NEVER upgrade to a completely new OS by "updating". I will do a completely fresh install. Only if I can figure out what went wrong...

What a complete nightmare.

I thought Apple had gotten this to a point where it was flawless. Maybe 2-3 systems ago? Where did this reliability go? Big Sur - IS THE ABSOLUTE WORST.

Will try to recount it here in the hopes someone might be able to shed some light on what I could do differently. I'm at the point a complete wipe and reinstall is favourably to hobbling along as it would be now. It is just not acceptable.

I backed everything up. Backed up my person stuff on one pocket drive, all work on another. I am meticulous about such backups, I've done it countless times, for myself, friends, clients, etc.
I manually copied the Mail directory, just in case I would have to manually set this up for one reason or another - already anticipating things won't go smoothly - 6 different email accounts and dozens of subfolders to keep things organized
Deleted a lot of bulk and did a further TimeMachine backup - freed up a further 80GB - checked it was available as of 11pm last night, checked further backups were available - but knew I had a trimmed-down backup - the latest
Restarted with Command+R and got into the Disk Utility app to wipe

Here's where things started to go "off the rails"

So, a new thing about Big Sur, I believe, as I had not encountered this with previous OSs but not sure had done so in 10.9 or 10.10... In Disk Utility after a Command+R reboot I am now presented with TWO HARD DRIVE PARTITIONS:

**Macintosh HD** and **Macintosh HD - Data**

I SHOULD HAVE STOPPED THERE!! Can I use TimeMachine to go back to 11pm last night and slap myself in the face? No.

So, I look this up and from what I was able to see, Macintosh HD is the boot drive - contains the necessary system for recovery... cannot be erased - makes sense. But Macintosh HD - Data can be erased. I was already having the sneaking suspicion this wasn't going to go where I wanted it to go - and was right.

Now, oddly enough, the complete reinstall of Big Sur took barely 30 minutes. THAT - I was impressed. I started it at midnight thinking I'd go to bed and after the usually 2-3 hours it would do what it needed to do. It was done in 30 minutes. That's impressive. If only it had done what I wanted.

I then immediately go through the new setup and get to the account recovery to retrieve my old user account to migrate it.

Cannot find my remote backup drive. I am using a Drobo. Thankfully I have a desktop iMac and I look up the network info and type in the IP - xx.0.0.xxx. No go.

So here I am now thinking, yeah, this is not going well, this is now a full day of rebuilding ahead.

Then I think, ok, just set up a new user account and then mount the Drobo and then start the Migration Assistant. That sounds perfectly logical. And true to form - with my experience with the Mac OS since the Catalina disasters... this does not work. I have the Drobo partition I use for the TimeMachine backups sitting there on my desktop and Migration Assistant just sits there "Looking up... whatever..." spinning and doing nothing. I type in the IP again. Nothing.

Big Sur reinstall FAIL additional text

MacBook Pro with Touch Bar

Posted on Apr 4, 2021 7:30 AM

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Answer 1

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AndrewC1264 Author

Level 1

15 points

Apr 4, 2021 10:15 AM in response to AndrewC1264

PP....

Thanks to your detailed post, I am now set up on my MacBook Pro with a fresh, completely-wipe install of Mac OS X 11.2.3. And I have a new sidekick - a thumb drive with Mac OS install. Haven't done that for almost 10 years but will keep one handy from now on, when any new OS becomes available. I think from now on - not going to just "update" to a completely new OS - I will *only* do a fresh install.

However, the migration did not work from within the account setup process - that is still truly annoying.

But, I am going to take my clean OS install and manually rebuild my account. Feel better about doing this because right now my trust in Apple is at the lowest point in my 33 years of buying Apple products.

The Apple OS install instructions need to be completely overhauled - **CORRECTED** - to include steps to avoid encountering the second, completely unnecessary, disk partition I was presented with.

And, Apple needs to completely overhaul the account set up process to find a remote backup - in this case a Drobo - when clearly it is asking for my network access for exactly this purpose.

Window sizing appears to be fixed - this was messed up from BS Day One and in spite of countless updates was never truly fixed even though some had posted it was...

Sidebar still appears to be an issue - while the Finder updated the width and stuck with it, none of the apps are honouring this width.

But, alas...

FontBook still does not permit disabling of all of the craptastical fonts that are choking my Adobe app menus - THIS HAS TO CHANGE!!

TextEdit continues to crash while highlighting and cutting multiple paragraphs - and this is with Apple's own installed fonts - not anything I have brought into the mix. Type a page of text, drag-highlight a paragraph, or partial paragraph, cut and WHAM - crash - bang boom. Very unstable and very intolerable.

Still not thoroughly happy with Big Sur - there are still issues in spite of these points being brought to Apple's attention for the past - well - since the Catalina debacle started this downhill slide in quality.

Thanks again for your help!

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Answer 2

Old Toad

Level 10

210,615 points

Apr 5, 2021 11:12 AM in response to AndrewC1264

AndrewC1264 wrote:

But I pay a premium for Apple products, I expect them to work as anticipated.

They do until users install cr*pware on them. There is no reason to ever install or run any 3rd party "cleaning", "optimizing", "speed-up", anti-virus, VPN or security apps on your Mac. This user tip describes what you need to know and do in order to protect your Mac: Effective defenses against malware and other threats - Apple Community.

There are no known viruses, i.e. self propagating, for Macs. There are, however, adware and malware which require the user to install, although unwittingly most of the time thru sneaky links, etc.

Anti Virus developers try to group all types as viruses into their ad campaigns of fear. They do a poor job of the detecting and isolating adware and malware. Since there are no viruses these apps use up a lot of system resources searching for what is non-existent and adversely affect system and app performance.

There is one app, Malwarebytes, which was developed by a long time contributor to these forums and a highly respected member of the computer security community, that is designed solely to seek out adware and known malware and remove it. The free version is more than adequate for most users.

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Answer 3

PRP_53

Level 10

91,813 points

Apr 4, 2021 7:53 AM in response to AndrewC1264

Personally doing a Wipe and Clean install of whoever macOS is a tedious job but doable.

1 - Need the Full Installer on a Qualifying Apple Computer.

2 - How to Create a Bootable Installer

3 - As this is a MBP 2018 - think the T2 Chip / Touch ID is present.

4 - About Startup Security Utility - have to get into it via Recover Mode and Enable booting from " External Drive " and " No Security "

5 - Now can boot to Bootable Installer

6 - Option key immediately at Startup with Bootable Installer attached Directly to computer.

7 - Choose the USB Drive and Presented with options - choose Disk Utilities

8 - IN DU - View >> View All attached Devices and Choose the Upper Most Drive ( Not Volumes listed below )

9 - Erase that Drive as APFS with GUID Partition Map

10 - Back out of Disk Utilities and choose Install macOS

11 - Several Auto Restarts during the installation

12 - if all goes well - Setup Assist will present.

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Answer 4

AndrewC1264 Author

Level 1

15 points

Apr 4, 2021 8:13 AM in response to PRP_53

PP - many thanks for the speedy reply.

So the question begs - why is Apple's own outline for this process COMPLETELY WRONG?

Will give this a go - will at least avoid the issue of having two partitions on the fresh install.

But - not entirely sure anything here will assist in being able to migrate my old user account from the Drobo - I got to this point in my reinstall and it failed - whether I manually mounted the Drobo BACKUP partition to which I had been doing TimeMachine backups, or whether I input the IP address to which is just continued to sit there spinning looking for servers.

So something is horribly wrong with the process - starting with Apple's outline and continuing with Apple's inability to access to a legitimate TimeMachine backup.

This, combined with a lot of *APPLE* app failures even more prevalent in Big Sur, lack of font management ability, unstable TextEdit, Mail is still a complete early-2000s kludge... I find I can no longer trust Apple AT ALL.

Much appreciated.

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Answer 5

AndrewC1264 Author

Level 1

15 points

Apr 5, 2021 10:14 AM in response to PRP_53

PP - worked as far as completely wiping a MacBookPro that has been plagued for months with a less-than-ideal install of Big Sur... but not fully successful in that Apple hasn't provided a stable solution for recovering an account from a backup maintained for months and updated just one hour before starting the process.

So... still very very unhappy with Apple and the current state of a number of its apps which continue to show less-than-ideal performance - Migration Assistant/TimeMachine, Mail and TextEdit being the ones off the top of my head. Just found yet another bug with Mac Mail which I will be posting shortly. The list is endless.

Thanks.

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Answer 6

PRP_53

Level 10

91,813 points

Apr 5, 2021 10:27 AM in response to AndrewC1264

Well - if one deems Big Sur not to ones liking for whatever reason and can not get everything 100% to ones' liking - there exists the Option to TUK the Big Sur. Just be sure to have the Bootable Installer of the version of macOS one wants and follow the Detailed instruction for the Wipe and Clean Install previously suggested.

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