MbA Boot Issue

[Philip Fisher]

I have a MbA (M1) 2020 model running Big Sur (11.7.4). It is booting to the Mac HD and Options icons instead of booting normally. I am guessing something happened to the OS therefore it can't load.

I have tried selecting Mac HD and safe boot but neither one seems to work.

When I select to reinstall Big Sur there isn't enough space to reinstall it.

How can I reinstall the OS without losing any data?

 

[Philip Fisher]

I decided to erase Mac HD volume but not the Data volume. Unfortunately, I was still short about 5 gb of space therefore I wasn't able to reinstall Big Sur. I was hoping to preserve the Data volume since that is where the users files are but that didn't work out.

After that failed then I erased the whole thing and tried to reinstall Big Sur. I am not using any flash drives. So, after it finishes then it restarts but now I get a message "Unable to set startup disk. SDErrorDomain error 108)" which I am not sure what that means. I think, maybe sometime of hardware failure has occurred.

I am not sure how to fix it?

 

[Philip Fisher]

The resolution was I had to reinstall Big Sur twice in order to get it work. The first attempt I reinstalled Big Sur then I got that message about SD Error Domain.... then the second attempt it worked and the computer booted normally.

Now, the computer is working and was updated to Ventura.

 

[Annie_M]

What a frustrating journey! I'm glad it's working properly now!

 

[EdwinG]

That’s definitely a weird one. Glad to see you figured it out

 

[Philip Fisher]

So, I have another MbA (M1) 2020 that is not booting normally. This one is running Monterey 12.6.2 but I have to reinstall it.

Obviously, there isn't enough space to perform an in place installation so I have to erase the whole drive to start all over again.

I want to preserve the DATA volume since that holds the users files and information. How do I copy what is on this volume and restore the files once I get the computer back up and running again?

 

[Mars20]

You could use Time Machine.