SSD S.M.A.R.T. Status Means I Can't Upgrade to Monterey

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SSD S.M.A.R.T. Status Means I Can't Upgrade to Monterey

I have been attempting to update my 2017 27" iMac to Monterey, and was surprised to see that I couldn’t upgrade due to S.M.A.R.T. “errors” on my hard drive.

To look into the issue further, I installed Smartmontools. My machine has a Fusion Drive, and it looks like the SSD threw the SMART error:

$ smartctl -a disk1
smartctl 7.3 2022-02-28 r5338 [Darwin 19.6.0 x86_64] (local build)
...
=== START OF SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: FAILED!
- NVM subsystem reliability has been degraded

SMART/Health Information (NVMe Log 0x02)
Critical Warning:                   0x04
Temperature:                        36 Celsius
Available Spare:                    100%
Available Spare Threshold:          10%
Percentage Used:                    131%
Data Units Read:                    514,120,194 [263 TB]
Data Units Written:                 492,038,070 [251 TB]
Host Read Commands:                 4,922,247,439
Host Write Commands:                3,400,896,502
Controller Busy Time:               21,280
Power Cycles:                       11,291
Power On Hours:                     5,649
Unsafe Shutdowns:                   54
Media and Data Integrity Errors:    0
Error Information Log Entries:      0

Error Information (NVMe Log 0x01, 16 of 64 entries)
No Errors Logged

After some research online, this appears to be the key:


Percentage Used:                    131%

Apparently this means, that I have exceeded the manufacturer’s estimate of the drive’s life by 31% (link). It does not mean that there have actually been any errors on the drive.

It appears that I’m basically stuck with a perfectly good drive that I cannot update. Kind of like the Check Engine light coming on in your car after 50,000 miles, and you can’t do any meaningful repairs until you completely replace your engine.

Has anyone else run into this and found a way around it?

Posted on May 30, 2022 12:27 PM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

Jonathan Bourland Author

Level 1

0 points

Jun 2, 2022 6:20 PM in response to steve359

I ended up installing Monterey on the external SSD. I recalled reading somewhere that after installing to an external drive, I would be able to install Monterey onto the internal drive, regardless of SMART status (in retrospect, I cannot find this reference, so I may have imagined it / confused it with something else).

I had a couple of scary moments (screen went black twice and stayed there until I restarted), but I can now boot into Monterey in the external drive. However, as you may have guessed, I still could not install Monterey from the external drive to the internal drive, due to the SMART issue.

So, it looks like my options have dwindled. It looks like I can:

Keep the external drive as my boot drive (I'll still need to migrate my data from the internal, but that's doable).
Remove the SSD from its enclosure, open up the iMac, and replace the internal SSD with the (until now) external SSD. This process is not for the faint of heart.

But there does not appear to be a way to upgrade the current internal drive itself.

Ideally, the Monterey installer would issue a strongly worded warning about SMART status or allow for an optional override, but would not actually prevent users from updating, since SMART errors do not always indicate a failing drive. But this is where we are.

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Answer 2

lllaass

Level 10

210,513 points

May 30, 2022 12:45 PM in response to Jonathan Bourland

Does your iMac have a Fusion Drive? That is a large HDD of 1TB or so and a small SSD of 100GB or so.

There are other posts in this forum of problem with Fusion Drive discovered when upgrading to Monterey.

One solution is to get a fast USB-C external drive like one with an NVMe drive and install Monterey on that and then try to restore you data to that external disk either from existing install or from a backup.

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Answer 3

steve359

Level 6

17,187 points

May 30, 2022 12:41 PM in response to Jonathan Bourland

Quite possibly. But you have another time-sensitive matter to address. Monterey will only load on a system that has an original Apple drive to install a firmware update. After that initial Monterey install the firmware limit will no longer bother you. You can load it on an external drive and not internal, but you need that Apple-original in the system for the firmware update required to reach Monterey.

I suggest you address this by getting another external drive that can eventually become a new TM for Monterey. Then format this new drive as APFS and install Monterey on it while the internal still responds so that the firmware update occurs.

One step at a time.

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Answer 4

steve359

Level 6

17,187 points

May 30, 2022 7:46 PM in response to Jonathan Bourland

You have an option here, since you are running less than Monterey right now. I use CarbonCopyCloner for backups for less than Monterey. It can make a fully-bootable clone that updates incrementally like TimeMachine does. But as of Monterey the "core system" files are stored in a "sealed encrypted " partition that cannot be updated at will. However ...

You can clone the pre-Monterey internal system to external using CCC (non-trial version is $40-ish). Then install Monterey on the external to see how the "in place upgrade" works out.

Just a thought.

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Answer 5

steve359

Level 6

17,187 points

May 30, 2022 3:25 PM in response to Jonathan Bourland

Fusion drives in general may not take Monterey, at least not yet. But many have reported running an NVMe (very fast) over Thunderbolt provides a reasonably pleasant experience with Monterey.

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Answer 6

May 30, 2022 4:53 PM in response to steve359

From the issues I read about here and elsewhere, my impression was not that it is an issue with the Fusion drive per se, but an issue with one of the individual physical drives — such as what I’m seeing.

My theory is that some of the Fusion drives are old enough that they are going to have SMART issues — because SMART “errors” do not necessarily indicate a failing drive, but can just be a measure of how much the drive has been used.

I guess the next step is to install on my external. If it doesn’t work to turn around and install it on my internal drive, at least have a fairly good external to use as my primary. I can post my results back here…

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Answer 7

steve359

Level 6

17,187 points

Jun 2, 2022 7:21 PM in response to Jonathan Bourland

Good ... firmware update complete.

As stated, NVMe drives in external enclosures are fast. The external NVMe technology can be faster in it self than the SSD on your logic board.

I still suggest using free version of CarbonCopyClone to duplicate your internal to external, then practice upgrading in-place on the external to see if you have any issues. They might fix the Fusion drive issue and you would like to know if in-place upgrade of your existing install works.

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Answer 8

May 30, 2022 3:14 PM in response to Jonathan Bourland

Thanks so much @steve359 and @Illaass. That’s the way I’ve been heading, too. I do have an external thunderbolt ssd formatted with APFS.

The Monterey installer is willing to install to it. If my goal is to get my original, internal drive to Monterey (and to take as few steps as possible), would I boot from the external (once it’s on Monterey) and then update the internal drive with the Monterey installer?

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SSD S.M.A.R.T. Status Means I Can't Upgrade to Monterey

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