Internet Recovery is painfully slow

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Level 1

17 points

Internet Recovery is painfully slow

Is there a reason why Internet Recovery is so painfully slow? Brand new MacBook Pro*, connected to Ethernet (via the Belkin USB-C adapter from the Apple Store); speed test shows 85 mbps down/93 mbps up which should be more than sufficient. Downloading the installer from the App Store over the same connection on an older MacBook Pro took less than 10 minutes. I'm 4 hours into the Internet Recovery download and it is still showing 30 minutes to go (and the count keeps increasing over time!)

*If the recovery partition worked, I wouldn't need to do this in the first place. Ran into the "Could not create a Preboot Volume for APFS" issue when trying to wipe and start fresh after multiple failures to import user data from an older Mac. This is pretty depressing, I literally unboxed the machine this morning and have not been able to do a thing with it.

MacBook Pro TouchBar and Touch ID, macOS High Sierra (10.13)

Posted on Mar 19, 2018 2:27 PM

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Answer 1

Best reply

CCCMikey

Level 1

9 points

Apr 29, 2018 2:35 AM in response to dr.nixon

I'm having the same issue in Australia. I have a 10Mbps Internet connection and a router that can show traffic per IP LAN address. The Internet Recovery is averaging 600Kbps with occasional peaks around 4Mbps. The installation log shows that it's slowly downloading the 430 chunks with each chunk averaging about 90 seconds, interspersed with "Download token timeout, attempting reauthorisation."

I thought maybe it was a WiFi issue, so moved it over the Ethernet and turned off WiFi, but no improvement. I guess Apple just isn't providing sufficient bandwidth for this service to be handled in a timely manner.

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Answer 2

dr.nixon Author

Level 1

17 points

Mar 19, 2018 3:09 PM in response to Kappy

Not dead out of the box. Worked fine, but when I tried to run Migration Assistant once my old machine was available, I could not import data. Migration Assistant didn't function as expected (zero opportunity to merge user profiles as expected - grayed out). Easy fix on a new system is remove existing user profile and start fresh. There is no reason for me to expect that the recovery partition wouldn't work to reset the system to OOB condition - except it doesn't. Check support comments for the APFS preboot volume issues - everything out there states you need to run Internet Recovery to address this.

I've been working with Apple systems since the ][c. I've rescued multiple systems that the owners had given up on. 5 Macs at home running everything from Leopard to High Sierra. I'm not especially concerned about my qualifications. I'm concerned that the recovery partition is useless for reinstalling High Sierra, and that Internet Recovery is only half done downloading after 4.5 hours of waiting, when I was able to download the High Sierra installer in under 8 minutes using another Mac plugged into the same router. It's a hardware issue, not a bandwidth issue.

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Answer 3

dr.nixon Author

Level 1

17 points

Mar 20, 2018 8:52 AM in response to Kappy

Diskmaker X + High Sierra install image download - 8 minutes. Creating install media using Diskmaker X and an external USB drive: 10 minutes. Reinstalling the OS using this drive: 8 minutes. Really incredible that this route is so much faster than the Internet Recovery. Short answer: If you have a working Mac, don't use Internet Recovery to repair a nonfunctional one.

(And lesson learned for me: don't create an account on a new Mac if you plan to do a migration later - do it all at once.)

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Answer 4

Kappy

Level 10

361,741 points

Mar 19, 2018 2:45 PM in response to dr.nixon

What you should have done:

Make an appointment at the Apple Genius Bar for service. If you need to find an Apple Store - Find a Store - Apple. It's under warranty. If it worked OOTB then why were you trying to erase the drive? How qualified are you to do this? If it was DOA then you should have returned it immediately. The first 14 days from the date of purchase entitle you to have it replaced or your money returned, no questions asked.

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Answer 5

Kappy

Level 10

361,741 points

Mar 19, 2018 3:20 PM in response to dr.nixon

So have I but APFS is truly the new game in town. Apple has not released much information for troubleshooting problems except for engineers and developers. We are pretty much in the dark.

Internet Recovery can be slow because not only does the machine have to download macOS it does so in parts. Then those parts have to be decompressed for installation which requires writing a copy of the code getting replaced where it is saved until the new code is written and verified. This takes much more time than installing a fully downloaded installer and running it. If you chose to reinstall over an existing system instead of first erasing the drive then you might as well double the time.

The Recovery HD must have been corrupted on your machine. That's a shame. Fixing it all will take time. Wait until you are transferring files using Migration Assistant. At it's best it's slow as molasses. A lot of checking done on the transfers to assure they are good, and that takes much more time than using cp in the Terminal.

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Internet Recovery is painfully slow

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