Is this normal? (macOS Big Sur update)

Behemoth · 11 Jun 2021 at 23:34

I'm sort of a new Mac user. I was given by a family friend a 2019 13 inch MacBook Pro as a gift. Its a lovely little machine and the keyboard is a joy to type on.

However that's not why I'm posting, what I'm trying to find out is if its normal for it to take almost a day to install the latest version of macOS. At this moment in time it says it will take 15 hours to complete the update to put it onto macOS Big Sur! I know Windows updates can take sometime but I don't think I've seen anything take this long, ever!

ChrisD. · 12 Jun 2021 at 08:09

What update is it specifically? It shouldn’t be taking anywhere near that long.

Behemoth · 12 Jun 2021 at 09:37

Its the whole thing. so going from MoJave to Big Sur. It's finally installed. I left it run over night and when I checked on it in the garage this morning found the installation was complete. The only thing I can think was that it's previous owners never did any kind of updates at all which is why it took so long.

ChrisD. · 12 Jun 2021 at 10:41

Behemoth said:
Its the whole thing. so going from MoJave to Big Sur. It's finally installed. I left it run over night and when I checked on it in the garage this morning found the installation was complete. The only thing I can think was that it's previous owners never did any kind of updates at all which is why it took so long.

It shouldn’t take longer than an hour from previous experience. It may be worth doing a clean install so you know you have a fresh baseline moving forward.

Hamzamunir · 12 Jun 2021 at 10:46

Same here ^ definitely shouldnt take that long

Behemoth · 12 Jun 2021 at 22:27

Planning on doing a fresh install, awaiting on a USBC converter to come so I can use one of the many memory sticks I have floating about.

Throrik · 12 Jun 2021 at 23:06

Behemoth said:
Planning on doing a fresh install, awaiting on a USBC converter to come so I can use one of the many memory sticks I have floating about.

You can just hit cmd+r on bootup to do an Internet install.

smogsy · 18 Jun 2021 at 01:42

Catalina -> big sur took me 45 minutes on Macbook pro 2018 (6C/16Gb Ram 256GB SSD) minor updates take 5-20 minutes

this is with all my corporate extras from IT on as well

Ryan-3 · 18 Jun 2021 at 14:56

Could this be as a result of slow internet speeds or are the necessary files already downloaded?

ChrisD. · 18 Jun 2021 at 16:51

Ryan-3 said:
Could this be as a result of slow internet speeds or are the necessary files already downloaded?

They are downloaded prior to the update process.