Strange issues w. install to external.
I can't believe I'm saying this but after many many years of Mac I may have no choice but to switch to Winblows. I have several Macs, laptops, etc.. My main one is a Mac Mini 2018. I'm out of space and I can't afford $500 plus disk to upgrade internal storage. I have a thunderbolt ssd I can use but when I try to restore to it I get errors re: Couldn't set up partitions on the target device - operation AddAPFSVolumeToContainer, Line #5482 Resource busy. The operation couldn't be completed (OSStatus error 49153).
I tried booting and choosing the install media and installing to the external (which is partitioned to APFS) but even though I'm holding down the Alt key it doesn't bring up an install option, just an option to select the boot disk. I may have to switch to a Winduhs system use for gaming. IT has a 1TB and a 2TB disk, and I can do what I need to do on it but I don't like that OS. Any help would be appreciated. I used to have a clone app but it no longer works since Apple's OS perms have changed. I searched the errors online but didn't find any useful responses, just stuff like "Pay Apple to fix it" or "Get a bigger internal". If I COULD afford it I would buy a new system. Unfortunately my income is down about 80% due to a health issue caused by something that was made almost mandatory.
I tried booting and choosing the install media and installing to the external (which is partitioned to APFS) but even though I'm holding down the Alt key it doesn't bring up an install option, just an option to select the boot disk. I may have to switch to a Winduhs system use for gaming. IT has a 1TB and a 2TB disk, and I can do what I need to do on it but I don't like that OS. Any help would be appreciated. I used to have a clone app but it no longer works since Apple's OS perms have changed. I searched the errors online but didn't find any useful responses, just stuff like "Pay Apple to fix it" or "Get a bigger internal". If I COULD afford it I would buy a new system. Unfortunately my income is down about 80% due to a health issue caused by something that was made almost mandatory.
Comments
You can clone the internal using Carbon Copy Cloner:
https://bombich.com/download
However, it would be better to just offload most of the files on the internal to the external SSD and continue booting from the internal.
There are apps that show what's using the most space like the following:
https://sourceforge.net/projects/grandperspectiv/files/latest/download
Relocate the biggest files to the external.