OSX Monterey Migration Failure: FIXED

Hello people, I had the exact same problem trying to migrate a backup over to a new install of Monterey because I upgraded the SSD to a 500gb, but the migration simply rebooted every time. But finally I got it to work since I kinda figured it out on my own how to make sure the boot-order is correct and OC is correctly loaded & set.

If you're going to clone your MacOS disk or use Migrate Assistant to migrate your old OSX to a new drive, OSX will simply "ignore/delete" this partition once you migrate or clone a drive using DiskUtility.

  • you install OSX using OCLP

  • you migrate OSX using Migrate Assistant, without OCLP

  • OR you migrate OSX using an SMBIOS from OC that is not a suitable candidate for the new OS

  • so then once you reboot, your fresh OS does not have the nessecary files needed to boot into OSX from OC

Luckily I had OSX installed on both SSD's so I could switch to one or the other to post-install OC on the disk, and if the disk failed I could start over untill I succeeded.

Ps, if you're at the point where the installtion succeeded, you were able to migrate your data, but when it reboots it just hangs at 40% of the loading, goes black and reboots, you want to skip to step 2 and skip the installation part.

Prerequisites;

16 gb USB flash-drive with MacOS installation created using OCLP (any goes)

1 external HDD/SDD reader (! important step in step 2.3.b , not required though)

2 SSD drives, one with your current MacOS on it (mine is a hackintosh)

Step 1: Cloning YOUR OLD OS on a NEW SSD using DiskUtility @ startup

  1. Boot into the installation from USB to open up DiskUtility from the USB, not any of the drives

  2. Open DiskUtility and

  3. Unmount the drive containing the OS you want to clone using the "eject" button

  4. Click on the drive you want your OS to be "cloned" to

  5. Click on "Restore" at the top menubar to select a source to clone to the disk

  6. As a source, now select your unmounted drive containing the OS you want cloned

  7. Continue to put the diskImage of your MacOS onto your new SSD using DiskUtility

This way you don't have to use Migrate Assistant at all, and if you used a legitimate OS install on your old device the only thing you have to is re-install/patch with OCLP. However, If you cloned a drive that already contained OC it will have not cloned the EFI partition that OCLP installs.

However, In my setup I used both drives as internal drives when I tried to clone them and it worked well... Untill the Mac rebooted and the screen was just black... Nothing showed. In hindsight it was obvious; the new drive needed to be set as startup-disk and OC needed to be post-installed since I could not boot from the USB, which is recognized as an external drive internally.

What I did was open up the iMac, disconnect both hard-drives, and just boot the iMac with the USB installer still in so it would show the boot screen. From there on I connected the old drive to see if it would boot, and it did. Then I checked the cloned drive and it also booted... But got stuck on the same loop as using migration.

For a moment I thought it failed, but I decided to try out one more thing; check the external drive is the start-up disk, and making sure the (external) drive is loaded first from within DiskUtility.

Step 2: setting the (external) drive as startup-disk from DiskUtility

Prerequisites:

Same 16gb flash drive you used in Step 1
(external) SSD with a clone of your old drive OR a fresh install + migrated copy

  1. Boot into the USB drive to open up DiskUtility from the USB, not any of the drives

  2. Once inside DiskUtility click the apple-icon in the top-left, and select "startup disk" or whatever it says in English (Ik kom uit Nederland)

3a. If you are running OSX from an internal drive you can simply select "restart" next to it

3b. If you are running OSX from an external drive like I did, choose "restart in target-disk-mode" * underneath it

Side info: I had both SSD's installed internally when I cloned the 250gb drive over to the 500gb one, and removed both so I could load them externally one by one since after succesfully cloning the drive over, rebooting after it gave a black screen and no boot screen since I couldn't know WHICH internal drive it loads first with OC installed.

What I figured out is that my "old SSD" used OCLP v0.51, and my SMBIOS was an iMac 18,1. This information is stored on the EFI of the SSD and only OC uses it. So TimeCapsule, DiskUtility and Migration Assistant completely ignore this partition, so you will have to figure out manually how to add that since the "removal" is done post-install.

Using OCLP 1.5 I managed to generate a different SMBIOS that used before, this time using the SMBIOS of a Mac Pro 1,1 and installed that on both the USB and the "old" SSD before cloning it to the 2nd SSD. I chose this setting after reading the documentation in which it explains that there are two special SMBIOS; mac pro 1,1 and mac pro 7,1 as they handle background refresh and such natively if you have a Polaris or Navi GPU.

The point I'm making here is that migration and all other methods failed simply because of the SMBIOS compatability, since booting into OSX Sonoma installer was impossible for me when booting from the old SSD which had the "wrong" SMBIOS. Only after installing the new SMBIOS was the installer able to load in the first place. So make sure your installer and your already installed OSX version have the same SMBIOS setting.

Then I applied step 3b, and the mac would finally boot from the new SSD! I felt so relieved figuring out how to do this on my own that I wanted to share this method for those who are stuck with a rebooting MacOS install after Migration, and who want to get to the bottom of it.

After I finally got my clone to work, as a BONUS I used the old SSD as a test to see if I could install Sonoma on the old version of OSX, and it did so flawlessly! I now have an iMac that is ready to be upgraded to Sonoma if needed since it already tested out on the old drive to work, and don't need to panic if I HAVE TO upgrade to a newer version of OSX.

Because I used two installs of OSX(+OC) during the installation I could swap back and forth during installation failures and try out all the possible options to migrate my version of OSX.

Without this setup I wouldn't have succeeded so if you only have one hard-drive to try this on, good luck! I hope this information gets you a step further into understanding the root of your problem migration OSX on OC to a newer version of OSX.

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