Late 2012 Mac mini, SSD, 10.14.5, boot camp assistant fails

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Late 2012 Mac mini, SSD, 10.14.5, boot camp assistant fails

Hi there,

I have a late 2012 mac mini which I recently upgraded with a 1TB SSD. The original HDD is used for time machine backups. Mac OS 10.14.5 runs beautifully but boot camp assistant fails to complete any tasks - it just hangs at "downloading windows support software" for hours (I even let it run overnight). I found the boot camp assistant update today but that does not install on my system. I've tried quite a few things but nothing has worked. Any ideas? Some pics attached.

Mac mini, macOS 10.14

Posted on Jul 2, 2019 3:56 AM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

Loner T

Level 9

59,513 points

Jul 2, 2019 6:33 AM in response to Dr Egg

On a Mini, if you have more than one internal disk, the configuration requires it to be a Fusion drive. Your current disk configuration is only supported on a MacPro.

You have two choices.

Remove the 1TB TM disk into an external enclosure, or,
Create a Fusion drive using the two internal disks, after moving your TM backups to an external disk.

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Answer 2

Dr Egg Author

Level 1

7 points

Jul 8, 2019 2:43 AM in response to Loner T

I was planning on trying this route anyway, so with your suggestion I went ahead and gave it a try. The HDD is disconnected, but I still can't use BCA successfully. The supplemental update won't install. When it comes time to make a Boot Camp partition, BCA sees only 10GB free space. There is actually over 300 GB free space. There aren't any other volumes or partitions showing up in diskutil. I wonder if earlier attempts with BCA have somehow grabbed space from my SSD. I'm not sure what to do next. Pics attached to help detail the situation. The Disk Utility pic with the partition tool is to show that there's only a 63.8 GB space available for a new partition. Where's all the free space gone?

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Answer 3

Dr Egg Author

Level 1

7 points

Jul 2, 2019 2:46 PM in response to Loner T

Thanks. I'm curious ... what if both internal disks were of the same kind, i.e. 2 SSDs or 2 HDDs? Would that work in the set up I have now, a main drive and a TM drive with a BC partition on the main drive?

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Answer 4

Loner T

Level 9

59,513 points

Jul 2, 2019 4:57 PM in response to Dr Egg

Dr Egg wrote:

Thanks. I'm curious ... what if both internal disks were of the same kind, i.e. 2 SSDs or 2 HDDs? Would that work in the set up I have now, a main drive and a TM drive with a BC partition on the main drive?

If you really want to keep both disks internal. You can temporarily disconnect the other, install Windows, and then reconnect the dedicated TM disk.

If your Mini fails, an internal TM backup also becomes inaccessible, and may not serve it's intended purpose very well.

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Answer 5

Loner T

Level 9

59,513 points

Jul 8, 2019 11:06 AM in response to Dr Egg

Dr Egg wrote:

The supplemental update won't install.

Since you do not have a Fusion configuration, this is expected behavior.

When it comes time to make a Boot Camp partition, BCA sees only 10GB free space. There is actually over 300 GB free space.

It may be consumed by local snapshots. Post the output of

sudo fsck_apfs -n -l /dev/rdisk1

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Late 2012 Mac mini, SSD, 10.14.5, boot camp assistant fails

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