macOS 11: Serious upgrade issues are possible due to insufficient storage

Before upgrading to the MacOS 11 Big Shrink, users should make sure they have enough space on their Mac, otherwise serious problems can occur during installation: Apple’s Big Sur installer does not guarantee enough space for a successful installation, warns an administrator.

Failure to do so can be found in the installer upgrade to MacOS 10.x for current MacOS 11.2 and MacOS 11.3 (beta), and may even be present in older MacOS version 11.1.

Requires at least 35.5 GB

According to Apple, the Big Sur upgrade from MacOS 10.12 Sierra requires at least 35.5 GB of available storage; When upgrading from the older MacOS version, 44.5GB should be free on the Mac. If the installer runs out of space while preparing the update, it will stop with an error message; There are no further issues in this regard.

However, if storage space is later depleted while the Big Shrink update is in progress, the following errors may occur: Explains the blog aimed at Mac executives Mr. Macintosh. The Mac then gets stuck in a boot cycle and displays an error message while making an update (“Error creating software update”), the boot disk is no longer found.

Hard disk encryption makes data recovery difficult

This is particularly complicated on Macs, whose data is protected by Apple’s filewall hard disk encryption, the report says: in recovery mode, even the correctly entered password is no longer accepted and your own data cannot be accessed.

If there is no current backup, the only way out in this case is a second Mac with MacOS 10.13 or 10.14 installed – only with these versions of the operating system can the trapped Mac be accessed via target disk mode and hard drive. Encrypted. If the MacOS 10.15 Catalina or MacOS 11 Big Sur already runs on the second Mac, it will not work.

If the current backup is available, users can completely remove the Mac stuck in the boot cycle from recovery mode, then reset it and import the data backup.

(lbe)