Install HS on External SSD

[jasnw]

OK, I'm probably just not "holding my mouth right", but I've tried twice to install HS on an external SSD (256 GB Samsung) and had two failures. I downloaded and quit the HS installer, and then ran the installer to put HS on the external SSD. I have El Cap on my main drive (an internal SSD), a copy of that install on one partition of an internal spinner, and a bootable Sierra on a second partition. When the installer asked where to install, I pointed it at the external (HFS+ formatted) SSD. It then ran through a 40-second "installation" and booted me into the partition on my spinner with Sierra! I booted back into my main El Cap installation and tried again. Same outcome.

So, what am I doing wrong? Is Apple protecting me from myself in some typically opaque manner?

 

[treekram]

I have installed High Sierra (APFS) on an external SSD in a USB enclosure without a problem. I have been doing some testing in the last month or so I've done installs to external HDD's - both USB and Thunderbolt without a problem. In one of these cases, the computer had 3 OS's it could boot from - a couple of HS and Mojave and it was able to reboot into the external HDD.

Plug in your external SSD. If you have reformatted or done something else to it, the following won't apply. Does the SSD show up in the Devices list in Finder. If so, from the Terminal app, run:
bless --info "/Volumes/[whatever the name is]"
You need the double-quotes if there is a space in whatever the name is. I haven't done this because I haven't failed at this step but this should tell whether the SSD is bootable - it will say "Blessed System [File or Folder] is " ... If you get a listing where there are six lines that look like "finderinfo[0]: 0 =>" but no "blessing", then somehow the blessing step failed or the Boot Manager isn't picking it up.

If it isn't blessed, you can enter the following command in Terminal:
sudo bless --folder "/Volumes/[whatever the name is]/System/Library/CoreServices"
[EDIT: this step may not work if a different boot file/directory is used during installs - it'll just ignore the command if you try to bless a non-existent folder.]

You can then try going into the Boot Manger (turn off/on the computer or restart it, pressing and holding the Option/Alt key at the chime). If it was blessed or if you blessed it, it should show up as one of the choices.

I'm also wondering if the install requires the EFI partition - have you deleted it by any chance?

Also, how are you doing the external SSD - is it one of the Samsung T? drives or an enclosure/docking station. If so - what brand/model?
[doublepost=1530048652][/doublepost]Another thought - if you're using a USB hub, try it with the external SSD directly connected to the computer.

 

[jasnw]

I was about to post the (disappointing) results of your bless suggestion when I saw your "another thought". This drive is on a USB hub, and not only that it's going through a Thunderbolt 1 port via a TB->USB-3 adapter. I'm on a 2011 iMac with old USB-2 ports. As Sheldon would say: Bazinga. I'm about 100% sure this is the problem. I'll see what happens when it's plugged directly into the port.
[doublepost=1530050038][/doublepost]Yep, that was it. The install is going as expected (slowly) now. Thanks. Saved me a lot of hair tearing-out.
[doublepost=1530050670][/doublepost]Does this also mean I won't be able to boot through the TB->USB-3 connection as well?

 

[treekram]

I was about to post the (disappointing) results of your bless suggestion when I saw your "another thought". This drive is on a USB hub, and not only that it's going through a Thunderbolt 1 port via a TB->USB-3 adapter. I'm on a 2011 iMac with old USB-2 ports. As Sheldon would say: Bazinga. I'm about 100% sure this is the problem. I'll see what happens when it's plugged directly into the port.
[doublepost=1530050038][/doublepost]Yep, that was it. The install is going as expected (slowly) now. Thanks. Saved me a lot of hair tearing-out.
[doublepost=1530050670][/doublepost]Does this also mean I won't be able to boot through the TB->USB-3 connection as well?

Glad you got to part 2 of the installation. Were you able to boot with the TB3->USB3 adapter before? If so, I would guess you would again - there may be something in the install boot that's a bit different and not accounted for by Apple. If you can't and you intend to use the SSD as an external boot disk, I would suggest looking for a refurbished older LaCie Rugged Thunderbolt/USB3 HDD - you can replace the HDD with a SSD. I have one that I got a few months back but haven't put a SSD in it yet - it was $70.

 

[jasnw]

I'm only using the SSD as an external boot device while I test using High Sierra and transfer things from my El Capitan installation. I want to make sure everything is going to work before I copy the HS installation over to my internal SSD. Thanks again for the intuition.

 

[MarkC426]

Personally I wouldn’t go to HS now (HS is like the new Lion.....far too many problems since release).
Why not update your ElCap to Sierra (which is solid) and then straight to Mojave later in the year?

 

[jasnw]

I'm doing this very carefully. I have had HS on my MBA for a couple of months now, and I have either found fixes for any problems or I-can-live-with-this work-arounds. I want to be operating on a workable installation of HS when Mojave gets to its settled-in point (10.14.4 at least) to ease (I hope) a transition to that. I will also have a kept-current El Capitan installation on a partition of the internal spinner on my iMac, just in case.

 

[treekram]

So have you tried booting from your external SSD using the TB->USB3 adapter. I would have thought that that was something the adapter manufacturer would have tested before selling the adapter (or perhaps there's something different about HS). Just curious.

 

[jasnw]

Sorry, meant to do a follow-up. Nope, it won't boot through the adapter. As with the attempt to install it ended up booting from the Sierra installation on my internal spinner. I could have sworn that I have booted from an external spinner (El Cap) through that connection, but I may be mis-remembering. I'm running it through the direct USB-2 port.

 

[treekram]

Sorry, meant to do a follow-up. Nope, it won't boot through the adapter. As with the attempt to install it ended up booting from the Sierra installation on my internal spinner. I could have sworn that I have booted from an external spinner (El Cap) through that connection, but I may be mis-remembering. I'm running it through the direct USB-2 port.

Interesting. You might not be mistaken in your recollection. In order to run High Sierra, the EFI firmware was upgraded (for APFS, besides typical other stuff), likely for all of the Macs that are officially supported by High Sierra. This would have happened in updates near the High Sierra release date (it could have been before the High Sierra release). In addition, there have been additional recent firmware updates (the firmware was upgraded when I did the either the 2018-002 or 2018-003 security update for El Capitan on my 2012 Mini). So perhaps in all of that, something changed so that the Boot Manager (which would be handled in the firmware) no longer recognizes a boot disk connected via TB->USB3 or the support for booting via TB->USB3 was not extended to APFS. I do see one review on Amazon from May 2018 where the reviewer said they could not boot on a 2012 iMac - the reviewer doesn't say what OS they're trying to boot.

 

[jasnw]

Looks like I'm getting a good clean stable install on the external SSD. Next step is to transfer to the internal SSD. My plan is zap and reformat the internal SSD from the external install, then use CCC to clone what's on the external SSD on the internal one. I'm a little concerned as to whether this is the correct approach, however, what with all the filesystem information and recovery partitions and such hidden away from mere users. The alternative would be to do a new clean install on the internal SSD after the reformat, and then use Migration Assistant to move everything from the external SSD to the internal. Any thoughts on the best approach to this? Don't want to muck it all up at this point.

 

[treekram]

Looks like I'm getting a good clean stable install on the external SSD. Next step is to transfer to the internal SSD. My plan is zap and reformat the internal SSD from the external install, then use CCC to clone what's on the external SSD on the internal one. I'm a little concerned as to whether this is the correct approach, however, what with all the filesystem information and recovery partitions and such hidden away from mere users. The alternative would be to do a new clean install on the internal SSD after the reformat, and then use Migration Assistant to move everything from the external SSD to the internal. Any thoughts on the best approach to this? Don't want to muck it all up at this point.

I don't use CCC but I've seen reports on the web that it works. What I have done as part of some recent testing is to do a clean install on a disk (both HDD and SSD) of High Sierra, then as part of the setup ask it to transfer files from another disk and that works as far as I can tell. One gotcha, though, is that if your source drive has the updated iTunes (through the update process) and you clean install from the 10.13.5 installer, in 2 out of 3 cases, it updated iTunes (which actually took a bit of time) during the transfer process. However, in one case, it didn't and iTunes wouldn't run because one of the internal data files (new iTunes version on source) wasn't compatible (older version on destination) and the updated iTunes didn't show up in the App Store as an update. In that case, one would need to search the web for the iTunes download and install it that way. I've also gone the Time Machine route and that also seems to work. So you have different options - but don't re-purpose that external SSD until you're confident that the migration worked.

 

[jasnw]

Thanks for the input. I'm a belt-and-suspenders kinda person, so you know I will hang on to the original installation for a while. Fifty years spent working with computers makes you cautious to the point of paranoia. After doing some checking I am going to go the CCC route first (fewer steps) and if that proves problematic blow it away and try the other approach.

 

[jasnw]

The CCC approach appears to have worked. Now I'm slogging through the grut-work that follows a clean install, resetting and retweaking things the way I want them, and dealing with things like Apple quietly requiring SSH keys be 2048-bit RSA so suddenly all my ssh and sftp actions were requiring password entry.

A bit of a scare initially after I had wiped/reformatted the internal SSD and transferred everything from the external to the internal drive. I went to System Preferences to select the startup disk and the internal SSD was completely missing! Diskutility could see it, but couldn't make much of it. I'm suspecting that was due to that drive now being formatted in APFS and I was looking at it from an El Cap viewpoint. I was able to boot into the startup manager and get to the drive that way, but there was a little sweating for a moment.