Hi Andrew...
I may have found a solution, have been on an off chats and calls with senior apple advisers.
- Create a bootable flash drive with the current OS you have installed on your internal drive.
- Open up recovery system once installed the MacOS version on the flash drive, I have an 14in M1 MBP so I just held the power button down until loading into startup.
- With the flash drive plugged in, you should have an option to install the MacOS version, in my case it was Ventura
- Go through the process, make sure your external drive is plugged in, and when it asks to choose where to install, choose the external drive.
- Let it do it’s business, when it eventually restarts don’t press keys or anything, let it do it’s thing.
- You should have a fresh install on your external drive ready to be set up now!
I tried installing the OS through the App Store and through recovery startup with no luck, tried with flash drive and it worked. I have full security on in both internal and external drives as well.
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https://www.reddit.com/r/mac/comments/y055i8/sderrordomain_error_108_usb_external_ssd_driver/
woodmeister50
User level:
Level 7
20,245 points
Aug 25, 2022 6:23 AM in response to GeneLand
That error is generally an indication that there is not an authorized "owner" of the drive.
One solution you can try, back up the drive with either Time Machine or a cloning system that can clone the macOS data volume, i.e. it does not need to be bootable and may actually be preferred not to be. Then download and create a bootable installer of the current macOS version. Next, having backed up the drive, erase the target drive and reinstall macOS making sure you have your backup drive installed. When prompted to create an owner for the installation, create a new and unique user that is different from any on the internal drive and different than what was used in the backup. Follow through the installation processes and when reaching the point where it asks if you want to migrate data, proceed with the migration option and continue with the the install with the "new user". Once complete, you will have two users. The new user and the user you you migrated and you can then log out of the new user and then log into your usual user.
There is an issue that can occur when installing or updating on an external drive that can sometimes invalidate the "owner" of the macOS installation if it is also the same "owner" as another macOS installation on the same system.. So, when the next update comes along, do that with "new" user you created and hopefully all will be well.
Hopefully Apple will sort to his issue in the future with M1 Macs.
SDErrorDomain error 108 on M1 Mac Mini - Apple Community
