Installing Ventura

[Chozun]

I am currently using Monterey on both of my Macs (V12.6.1 on my 2020 M1 Mac Mini, and V12.6 on my 2021 M1 MacBook Air). I just purchased a Samsung T7 Shield 1 TB Portable SSD, received it last night, and used Disk Utility to Erase and Format the entire device as APFS, and Scheme Guid Partition Map. Once OS 13.1 is released, I plan on downloading the entire installer from the App Store to the Mac Mini. This might seem like a basic question, and in prior years (and prior versions of the OS up to and including Big Sur), it was rather straight forward: double click on the Installer File, choose the device for installation, and away it would go. Will the same process work for Ventura, with the installation onto that external 1 TB Samsung SSD? Assuming that is the case, I should then be able to migrate all my needed "stuff" from the Mini. I then plan on booting the Mini, at times, from that external SSD, so that I can test Ventura with all my apps.

I remember with Monterey that I needed to create a bootable USB device, and then follow that process. Hopefully that will not be needed.

 

[rm5]

Ok, there's a guy who explains this in a video WAY better than me, but I'm going to do my best here. The short answer is that you will upgrade from the full installer. I recommend you read the details below to fully understand this:

There are two "upgrade tracks" you could take:

1. Upgrade through System Preferences > Software Update
2. Download the Full Installer through the App Store (or another service like MDS)

If you want to install Ventura on the external drive, you will HAVE to do #2. This is because of a new Software Update mechanism that, on M1 devices, automatically installs on the INTERNAL DRIVE. Basically, this new mechanism downloads only the required components (i.e. a delta update). So, what you need to do is NOT upgrade through Software Update Prefs, you have to download the full installer from the app store, etc.

I hope this answers your question—if not, let me know.

 

[Chozun]

Besides for my testing, when I eventually move from Monterey to Ventura (probably with V13.3 of Ventura, assuming just about all "serious" issues are resolved), I will download the full Ventura installer from the App Store to my Mac Mini, then stop the installation process at that point. Next, I would make a copy of that installation file on a USB stick, and then use it to copy that installer file to my MacBook Air. Next (as I normally do), I would run Onyx, then Tech Tool Pro to "clean up" the Monterey-based system on each machine. Then, I will use SuperDuper! to make a bootable backup on an external SSD for both machines. When that is done, I would boot the applicable machine from it's backup, and then do the following:

1. Use Disk Utility on the backup to Erase and Format the internal SSD for the machine.
2. Navigate to the Ventura installation file, launch it, and then install Ventura onto that internal SSD.
3. As is usual, (will be offered this via the installation process) migrate my apps, settings, etc. from the backup to the internal SSD.
4. After 3 is complete, restart the applicable Mac from the internal SSD (and thus into Ventura).
5. Remove the Monterey version of Onyx, and install the Ventura version of Onyx.

That is the process I had always used up to and including Big Sur. For whatever reason, Apple abandoned the "KISS philosophy" and made it more difficult for Monterey (although I was able to recently follow those steps above to do a clean, fresh installation of V12.6.1 of Monterey onto my Mac Mini (was having a weird problem, as I lost the start-up chime, and no matter what I did, could not get it back; got it back with that clean installation of V12.6.1).