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Summary: The objective of this blog post is to share useful information when your Mac fails to upgrade to macOS Sierra and doesn’t boot to any OS X due to the failed installation procedure. Apple always recommends backup the entire Mac hard drive through Time Machine application before upgrading to a latest OS X.
Moreover, Apple keeps the OS X update process very simple so that every user can upgrade to a newer version without the assistance of an Apple expert. Despite all these measures, many Mac users come across data recovery problems either during the OS X upgrade processes or after the OS X installation. Data losses while an OS X upgrade isn’t limited to any specific Mac devices, but it can occur on an iMac, MacBook Pro, Air, Mini or Pro. A failed OS X installation wouldn’t affect a pro-active Mac user who readily backs up everything to a Time Machine drive. Even if the Mac fails to boot to an OS X, the user can still boot into Recovery Mode and choose the option “ Restore from Time Machine Backup” which will restore the previous version of OS X with all data back to the user’s Mac. It’s that simple!!
Apr 13, 2016 - The instructions are the same for El Capitan and High Sierra with. You use the flash drive as a substitute for the hidden OS X Recovery. Saved the Yosemite installer file, download from the Mac App Store, in a safe location. RELATED: Things to know about OS X Internet Recovery Mode. Other options in Internet Recovery are the same as in standard Recovery Mode: you can use Disk Utility to fix errors on any connected drive, get help online in Safari and restore your Mac from a Time Machine backup. Internet Recovery is supported on newer Macs with OS X Lion or later.
Let us consider an example. Mr Patrick didn’t take backup of his Mac system and went forward to upgrade to macOS Sierra. During the operation, the Mac rebooted and showed Mr Patrick the error “ OS X Sierra couldn’t be installed on your machine”. In the absence of a Time Machine backup copy, rolling back to the previous OS X and restoring data becomes a dream.
Every time, he restarts his Mac, the monitor greets him with the same error “ OS X Sierra couldn’t be installed on your machine”. Solution (As recommended by Apple) Step 1) On the event of encountering the error mentioned above, Apple recommends to backup and format the targeted hard disk drive. If you can back it up without any issues, then the problem will be solved.
But, Step 2)If the hard drive couldn’t be backed up, then you must perform a small surgery to resolve this issue. Please follow below advice:. Restart Mac and go to Recovery Mode and select Disk Utility. Go to Partition tab and decrease the size of your startup disk just a little bit.
Click Apply to save your setting. Read More: MacOS Sierra Data Recovery (Process) Step 1) Open the software interface and select the data types you require to recover. Further, click Next button. Step 2) Select your hard drive from the list of all available devices. Press Scan to launch hard drive scanning Step 3) Let the software scan your hard drive entirely Step 4) The message – Scan is completed Step 5) Preview your data comfortably Step 6) Now, this is the best part where you can click Recover button and provide a safe destination to save all the recoverable data Conclusion The problem of data loss and recovery after a failed macOS Sierra could get resolved by resizing the startup disk drive or with the help of the mentioned utility which will boot up the Mac for file recovery.
This morning I updated macOS High Sierra from 10.13.3 to 10.13.4. It appeared to install fine (I got to the login window), so I clicked on 'Shutdown', and when I got to the office, and turned on my Mac, it rebooted into recovery, with the Installer Log open, and a dialog that read, 'The macOS Installation couldn't be completed'. I called Apple and they had me run a check disk, and the boot-up volume didn't have any error. My internal SSD showed up just fine, to this poor chap. Apple also had me try to restart in Safe Mode, but the Apple icon got stuck at 100% progress (3+ minutes waiting). So, since my drive appears to be intact (I used Terminal to browse my data), is it possible to undo the update or reinstall macOS High Sierra and have the system work as it was before the update (apps and data still accessible)?
Note, I use Time Machine backups, and I have a 2TB drive with about 40% free space. There are lots of 'snapshots' on the volume. Is there a way to recover the system to the Time Machine snapshot?
![Download os x sierra 10.12 Download os x sierra 10.12](/uploads/1/2/5/6/125602734/196009638.jpg)
Or, will I need to reinstall macOS High Sierra? Since posting this, Apple called me back and they said that I should be able to reinstall macOS Sierra without formatting the drive and I should be back to the state I was before the failure. I haven't tried this yet as I wanted to see if others have followed this or another procedure to recover from this failure without blowing up the hard drive and starting from scratch. In the past I have used a procedure for upgrading macOS versions that I had good successes with, especially when discussion groups and news are seeing problematic installs: using a system cleaner. EG using something like Onyx before installing, then a reboot and proceed with the install. Yah, too late now for you but something to consider for the next time. If the restarting in Safe mode doesn't do the trick (it may.) If I were you I would use Recovery Mode and restore from a Time Machine backup.
If I remember correctly you have the ability to restore from a specific point in time. Same problem; installation of 10.13.4 failed with 'could not be completed'. I booted into recovery mode, ran disk utility repair and tried again after restoring from backup. Still no joy, and disk utility is now reporting lots of 'invalid internalflags'. Finally I restored again and I'm sticking with 10.13.3. Checking the fsroot tree. Warning: inodeval: object (oid 0x5edb): invalid internalflags (0x48000) warning: inodeval: object (oid 0x5edb): invalid pad2 (0x2a).
Warning: inodeval: object (oid 0x5ee1): invalid internalflags (0x48000) warning: inodeval: object (oid 0x5ee1): invalid pad2 (0x2a) Checking the snapshot metadata tree. Checking the extent ref tree. Checking the snapshots. Checking snapshot 1 of 3. Checking snapshot 2 of 3. Checking snapshot 3 of 3.
Verifying allocated space. The volume /dev/rdisk1s1 appears to be OK. File system check exit code is 0.
Restoring the original state found as mounted. Operation successful. I got exactly the same problem: after 8-9 minutes got the message to restart because the update didn't work. I had the same with the previous update, but didn't learn my lesson. Then I downloaded the update and with the dmg file managed to update. Mistakenly I didn't this time.
So, first I restarted in safe mode, which worked, but when I restarted again back in normal mode, I got the same problem. Then I restarted with the space bar.
Same problem. Then I restarted in recovery mode, and that finally worked. However, regretfully my most recent time machine backup was 2 weeks old (I was traveling), meaning I lost 14 days of work. For the past hour I have been trying to download the dmg file instead of using the update via apple store. First attempt, the download got stuck at 577KB; second attempt stuck at 4.1MB. So, now I decided to wait & see and ignore the apple store message to update, until I read some good news.