Catalina installer tried to install. Apparently there was not enough memory. It did not tell me this before it plowed through to install the update. There was no way to back out of it to free up space. Below are screenshots of what happened next. Any attempt to back out and get back to Mojave led me back to the first screen. I am at a loss on what to try next.
MacBook
Hello dlspinks and welcome to Apple Support Communities.
I see you've run into some difficulties installing Catalina.
First try booting into safe mode to see if you can get out of the Catalina installer.
Use safe mode to isolate issues with your Mac - Apple Support
If that does not work, you may need to use recovery mode to reinstall Mojave.
How to reinstall macOS from macOS Recovery - Apple Support
Cheers.
Thank you for responding to my issue. I was not able to start my laptop using Safe Mode. I was able to start installation of Mojave from maxOS Recovery.
However, I ended up with the same result - not enough room. Apparently Catalina is still there, choking my machine.
i don’t understand why Catalina installer did not give an escape route when it sensed there was was not enough room BEFORE it tried to shove in the upgrade.
The Mojave installer did basically the same thing as the Catalina installer. Unfortunately I do not know how to do any of those things you are now suggesting. I would like to clear off space, but I don’t know how to access Terminal in Recovery. Is there a place with step by step I can follow? I am really hoping to not have to erase my drive. My Airport Time Capsule has been a brick for almost a year.
Thanks again for your assistance.
So sorry - hope you are able to fix it. My iMac won't shut down since installing Catalina. Instead, it restarts with an error message. On the phone with Apple support for hours and no fix! Can no longer access Microsoft Office either. It's a nightmare!
BreeZee_17, I was able to start internet Recovery with 2TB thumbdrive inserted that was originally formatted MS-DOS Fat. After I grayed out the volume within the drive, I then selected the external drive, chose erase at the bottom right, and typed TESTING in the name field, it put a new volume titled TESTING under the external drive. I have reached a roadblock at step 9 in that the choices to format the 2TB drive do not contain APSF. See pic below. I feel like I am going down a rabbit hole. I have never had a major issue installing IOS upgrades before.
Thank you for the detailed information.
Can this be done with a 1TB thumb drive?
Hi d1spinks.
I'm happy to help out. Have a great rest of your day.
Cheers.
Thanks, Ross. I do have a lot in the Cloud, but not everything. Hope I don’t have to erase my disk.
If the above walk-through works, I will report it here and it may be useful to you.
Try resetting NVRAM. That should reset the Startup Disk to your internal hard drive.
However, did the installer start anything, or did it abort out immediately.
If it started installing, then discovered it was out of space, the old startup is likely not functional.
You'd have to boot into Internet Recovery and reinstall the OS.
You also may have to use Terminal in Recovery to clear off some space on the drive, regardless of which OS you re-install.
Hi dlspinks.
Using Terminal would require knowing the name and file path of any large files you want to get rid of to make space for the OS install while reinstalling from Internet Recovery would mean erasing the drive and losing all of your data. There is another way that just requires an external hard drive that is empty or can be erased.
What you would do would be to create a clean installation of macOS on the external drive and then boot using that rather than the Mac's internal drive. Once booted using the external, you should be able to access the internal drive via Finder, delete the large files that need to go, back up the Mac and start the install process for Catalina over on the internal drive. You'll want an external drive that is larger than the internal drive in your Mac by at least 50GB. If this were happening to me, I would partition that drive into two parts: The first 50 GB portion for the macOS install and the rest of it held in reserve for a Time Machine backup.
Here are the steps for installing macOS to the external drive.
1) Connect an external drive to the Mac.
2) Startup using macOS Recovery.
3) Select Disk Utility and click Continue.
4) Select View menu > Show All Devices.
5) Select the volume that appears under the external drive, and click the Unmount button on the toolbar. If the external drive contains multiple volumes, repeat this step for each remaining volume, until they are all unmounted (volume name will appear in gray when unmounted).
6) Select the external drive (above the unmounted volume).
7) Click the Erase button on the toolbar, or select Edit menu > Erase…
8) Type "Testing" into the Name field.
9) Select APFS from the Format pop-up menu.
10) Select GUID Partition Map from the Scheme pop-up menu.
11) Click Erase.
12) Quit Disk Utility
13) Select Reinstall macOS and click Continue. Follow the on-screen instructions to install macOS, but select the "Testing" volume when asked which disk to install macOS on.
14) During Setup Assistant, skip the step of signing in with an Apple ID, and create a new user named "Test". Don't migrate any users from a backup or the other startup disk.
Once you are booted to the external drive, find the Catalina installer which should be in the Applications folder and delete it. At this point you can also cull other large files you don't need from the Mac so that you do have space for the install. Once you've gotten rid of the files you are clearing out, make sure to empty the Trash.
Once you've done all that, boot to Recovery again and choose Reinstall macOS but this time, install in on the Mac's internal drive.
Cheers.
Hi dlspinks.
Depending on the amount of data you need to back up, plus the space needed to install macOS, it's possible the 1TB could be sufficient. At this point however, I'd suggest reaching out to Apple for additional information and assistance with these steps: Contact Apple Support
Cheers.
Thanks.
Oh no that's no good maybe its time to put the storage mostly into your iCloud if you have any and a way to manage it through into your computer.
Sincerley,
Ross ~rw
Catalina install destroyed my computer
