Ventura 13.4.1 external bootable drive refuses to start
I'm running Ventura 13.4.1 on my 2020 MacBook Air M1. I'd like to keep that installation intact and install Ventura 13.4.1 on an external drive for testing/experimentation. But after running the 13.4.1 installer on the external drive, it refuses to start and complete the installation. Here are the steps I'm following...
- I booted to the startup options and set Startup Security to "Reduced"
- Format external drive APFS Container with GUID Partition Map
- Download Ventura 13.4.1 from App Store and install to the external drive
- Once the install is complete, the system restarts
- The new installation appears to be booting, but when the wait bar reaches about 50%, the system restarts again. I understand that it's normal for the system to restart more than once during installation.
- But then the system keeps restarting. After four or five restarts, it finally boots into the Boot Recovery System and I'm given the choice to either reinstall or choose a different startup drive. If I choose "reinstall", I'm presented a choice of four drives: the internal drive, the external drive (greyed out), and two drives labeled "preboot". When I hover over the external drive, I'm told I can't install to that drive because it has an incomplete installation, and I need to reformat and start over.
- So I boot to the internal drive, then in System Settings I try to set the external as the startup drive, but then when I restart I get an error message that the drive can't be set as startup and get a "108" error message.
I'm trying this with two external drives: a Corsair Voyager GTX 256GB and a PNY USB 3.2.2 256GB. I get the same result with both. Both drives have a USB-A connector, so I'm connecting them to the MBA with an Apple USB-A to USB-C adapter.
I actually had Ventura 13.2 installed on the Corsair GTX, and it worked great. But it wouldn't upgrade to 13.2.1, so I erased it to try and do a fresh install, but ran into this same problem, and haven't been able to get Ventura working on either external drive since.
Any suggestions? Is there an error log someplace that might shed light on the problem?
MacBook Air 13″, macOS 13.4