I just installed Monterey onto an external drive from a boot installer. Everything seemed to go correctly, except when it the installed finished it never went into the OS. I can select and assign the volume as the startup disk in System Settings/General, but when I try to Restart I get this
What does this mean and why is this happening?
I'm on an M1 MBP currently in Ventura.
[Re-Titled by Moderator]
Was your M1 MBP originally delivered with Monterey? If delivered with Ventura, Monterey may not be compatible.
Was your Sabrent drive originally formatted from this M1 MBP under the same user account that is attempting to install macOS on it? I recall you ran into some problems regarding external boot drive 'ownership' before, perhaps with this same M1 MBP.
I agree with your assessment that macOS system-level things have become very frustrating in the past few years.
"Unable to set startup disk An error occurred while setting "drivename" as the startup disk: The operation couldn't be completed. (SDErrorDomian error 108)" usually occurs on M1, M2, or T2 Macs, resulting from incorrect Startup Security Utility settings, drive connection problems, issues with your external SSD's macOS installation, booting from a macOS version earlier than the OS installed on Mac, etc.
About Startup Security Utility on a Mac with the Apple T2 Security Chip - Apple Support
When you run Disk Utilty's Disk first Aid on one of these non bootable partitions, what does it report?
Clearly something happened or corrupted the disk. I would try reformatting the disk using Apple's Disk Utility all only. Many disk come with maintenance apps which almost always cause problems on Macs. If you have one delete it and do not use it. After the reformat do another OS installation. If it installs successfully, that disk will automatically be the startup disk.
Does the Startup Security Utility show externals bootable?
Exactly the same thing happened running the Ventura installer: installation completed but the drive was not bootable. All the system content is on the drive, but the installer will not allow it to be blessed.
Do you have another drive you can try to install on? Preferably a different make/model...
I'd lay this out as either a hardware fault or compatibility problem with that particular drive and the M1 MBP.
Possibly a bad drive? Stranger things have happened. I got bit by a Sandisk Extreme Pro. In my case, I was able to format and install, got everything the way I liked it, then a day later, boom. iMac rebooted and the drive acted like it was brand new. Everything on it was gone including the partition table.
I tried a Sonoma Recovery install onto a Samsung T7 with the same result. The problem I’m thinking is in the system drive, whether Ventura or Sonoma, that’s controlling the installation and not allowing the drive to be blessed for some reason.
Unfreakingbelivable. Erase to ExFAT, erase to HFS+, erase to APFS worked to do a recovery install from Sonoma. Or maybe it just works on weekends.
Next to try a Ventura volume on the same drive. Then back to a Monterey volume from a boot installer.
Odd thing. The drive originally came ExFAT formatted, and I had to erase to HFS+, and then to APFS.
That would indicate that the external disk you installed it on is not actually bootable.
The internal volumes are set to Reduced Security. They can boot from externals, and I have done so in the past.
Have you tried it from aa USB Install stick boot?
I ran the installer again. Everything seemed to go correctly until the about one minute remaining mark. It stalled there for many minutes, and then went to 43 seconds remaining. After a few more minutes the system rebooted, actually it shut down. Sat for a while and then booted. It started the boot process and then shut down again. Started again and then bonged and restarted, eventually launching into Ventura.
Apple software is great at the user interface level, but when having to deal with it at the system level it has become complete garbage over the last few years. That a system installer from the Mac App Store doesn't install an OS flawlessly is hard to imagine; it's the kind of thing is really truly, embarrassingly ridiculous.
The first time I tried was for Monterey from a boot installer. I tried again from a Ventura boot installer, which also failed in the same way. Because I’m on a Ventura system, I’ll try installing from Ventura recovery, which is incredibly much slower of course, but I’ll see if that works.
Error when attempting to assign startup disk on MacBook Pro M1
