Big Sur

[timkins]

I will be downloading Big Sur to my Mac over the weekend. I am currently running a 21.5" mac desktop late 2015 with 3.1 GHZ Quad core with 8 GB memory and using OS 10.15.7. I have a time machine hooked up. Will this suffice as a back up in case I run into problems and have to go back to Catalina 10.15.7? I am really concerned about this download and the possibilities of problems.

 

[MacInWin]

The TM backup will suffice, in part. Unfortunately, going back from BigSur to anything else is hard to do. BigSur not only sets the Macintosh HD to read only, it also encrypts it so that it cannot be messed with. As in Catalina, there is then a Macintosh HD - Data Volume where your data is stored. That is the same in BigSur.

So, to go back to Catalina requires that you completely erase the internal drive, wiping out everything and going back to a bare naked drive, then repartitioning and reinstalling Catalina on it, then using Migration Assistant at the first boot (after the Welcome setup and before you create a user account) to migrate your account from the TM backup to the internal drive. It's a real PITA, but it works.

Someone may come along and suggest a clone backup. That approach won't resolve the need to repartition/erase the internal drive, but it will give you a working system as you do that. You could clone the Catalina system to an external drive, put it aside, then install Big Sur, give it a go and if it works for you, fine. If you don't like it and want to go back, boot from the Catalina clone, repartition and erase the internal drive, reinstall Catalina and then clone back from the external to the internal. About the same steps, but with a working system as you do it.

Don't let that difficulty bar you from pressing on, however, Big Sur is, for me, much "snappier" than Catalina was on my MBPr mid-2015 system.

 

[timkins]

so what you are saying is if I have a problem downloading BIG SUR is I am stuck with a problem that I will need help from someone more skilled than I am.

 

[MacInWin]

Not with downloading. Nor with installing. The challenge is in going back to something from before Big Sur. But downloading and installing it is pretty easy to do. It does require about 40GB of storage on the drive to do the installation, but it's pretty easy to do.

 

[ferrarr]

You may want to test it using an external drive or separate partition, for now. Install Big Sur and test your apps with it. If your Mac is something you use for work, you may want to wait.

 

[timkins]

No work retired, no external drive. Not sure what to do so I will wait.

 

[chscag]

No work retired, no external drive. Not sure what to do so I will wait.

Updating macOS without an external drive to make a backup on is definitely very risky. How have you been previously updating your iMac?

 

[RadDave]

Not with downloading. Nor with installing. The challenge is in going back to something from before Big Sur. But downloading and installing it is pretty easy to do. It does require about 40GB of storage on the drive to do the installation, but it's pretty easy to do.

Thanks Jake, Charlie, and others! I've been following these Big Sur (BG) discussions for days (or weeks?) now and have not upgraded the 2 of 3 Macs I own that can take BG, mainly for the issues related to Jake's comments in the post above - I usually have not waited long to do these macOS upgrades buy going from 10 to 11 is obviously a big deal - my computers are still functioning fine and I've been doing the Catalina/Safari updates on each, so has not been a problem; will continue to track the thoughts and suggestions. Dave

 

[NSMacGuru]

Not to blow my own horn, but I consider myself to be on the "expert" side of the Macintosh world. I've been with Apple since before there were Macs. I own several, including iOS devices, desktops / laptops, My daily driver is a 2018 (2017 model) 27" iMac custom configured with an i7 chip and midrange graphics card upgrade, and 24gigs of RAM.

I offer this information to give weight to this: I still use Mojave 10.14.6.

Catalina was 'waaay too buggy to bother with an upgrade. And Big Sur still looks to present more potential hazards than benefits. I may well upgrade to Big Sur, but not until they get to the .4 or higher version number.

SO - let me ask you: Why do you want to upgrade to Big Sur, particularly on a five-year-old Mac? I wouldn't consider doing it myself with 8gigs of RAM either, but I may have more pressing performance needs than do you.

Since you're on Catalina, I guess moving up to Big Sur is the easiest route to get off that OS and on to something (hopefully) more stable. (If you did not have that option, I would recommend a downgrade to 10.14.6 on that age of a machine).

And as chscag above notes: No way in heck would I do a major OS upgrade, particularly one that is a major switch in terms of filesystem and innards, without at least one good backup, either Time Machine or Clone.

YMMV.

Good luck!

 

[IWT]

Although it crops up here on a regular basis, I still find it hard to understand why people, having spent good money on a computer, don't have any backup.

Data is valuable and Disk is cheap. In fact an EHD is pennies in comparison with the cost of a modern Mac.

Ian

 

[MacInWin]

Catalina was 'waaay too buggy to bother with an upgrade. And Big Sur still looks to present more potential hazards than benefits. I may well upgrade to Big Sur, but not until they get to the .4 or higher version number.

I find that curious. What bugs kept you from Catalina? I found it to be a pretty good version. Big Sur is even better, bringing new vitality to my mid-2015 MBPr. The only thing in Big Sur that I know of that is broken is the asr process that is need to do a bootable clone, as Mike Bombich of CCC has indicated. But there are workarounds and they work, so it's a nuisance, not a show stopper.

And what is magic about a .4 release? You are running a .6 release now, so the .4 you installed had more bugs that required .5 and then .6. I do tend to avoid .0 releases, but usually by .2 things are settled out. In the case of Big Sur, they started with 11.0.1, then went to 11.1 and now 11.2. Given that 11.0 was a real, if limited, version, that made the .1 functional the second release so I gave it a go. And it's really good.