Sometimes, the migration itself can cause unexpected problems. Whether you migrate user accounts and apps from a copy or backup, or laboriously reinstall everything you need on your new system, there’s a chance that something important will get left out and cause problems. If you see this as a good opportunity to clean those up, and are prepared to spend the time doing so, you may find a clean install worth the extra effort. Those include your bulging Library folder which is bound to contain the remains of all sorts of apps long since removed. Where there can be benefits are in those system files, including Safari, which are stored not on the SSV, but on your writeable Data volume, and in the others there. So as far as the System volume is concerned, there’s nothing to be gained in a clean over a regular install. Every time that system is booted, its integrity is verified against Apple’s master Seal. That is first installed on the separate System volume, every file checked for integrity, the whole volume ‘sealed’ with a cryptographic hash, and then saved as an immutable snapshot.

This article asks what benefits there are to doing this with Monterey or Big Sur, and how you can do it.īig Sur and Monterey are different from all previous versions of macOS in that the great bulk of macOS is loaded and run from a Sealed System Volume (SSV). In the days when system and user files were all intermingled in the same volume, there were good arguments that the result was worth the extra effort, both in cleaning out the crud accumulated over the years, and in ensuring that we started with a perfect, mint copy of macOS.

You can also download iOS 14 and iPadOS 14 now, too, if you haven't already.In the past, many of us took the opportunity when upgrading to a major new version of macOS to perform a clean install onto a freshly-formatted disk. But as of Tuesday, Apple's system status page had the update marked as 'available.' One word of warning: Some users reported slow or failed downloads last week. Once you download and install the update and restart your computer, you'll be running on MacOS Big Sur. The download will start immediately, but may take while - for my MacBook Air, it estimated about an hour. Or, go to System Preferences > Software Update, and find MacOS Big Sur. Make sure that you are running OS X 10.9 or later, and have 4GB of memory available, and 35.5GB available storage.ģ. You don't want to risk losing everything when you upgrade.Ģ. If you want to download MacOS Big Sur, follow these steps:ġ. How to download and install MacOS Big Sur

Check out the 5 best new features of MacOS Big Sur now.

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