Best approach to upgrade/reinstall

[anarche]

So I tried to upgrade from macOS Sierra (10.12.6) on my Macbook Air, 2015 - I had about 10 GB free. It failed twice, the second time with no progress on the progress bar after hours.

I was able to restore from my Time Machine backup and am afraid of attempting this upgrade again. Any advice on how to make it work - a reinstall or any other method, while keeping all my documents and data of course, which seems to be good on the Time Machine.

 

[Apple_Robert]

Before attempting it again, I would make sure that you have a bootable clone of your MBA. I suggest using Carbon Copy Cloner Should something bad happen again, CCC will allow you to boot from your backup drive. It will also restore your MBA drive a heck of a lot faster than TM. Always have a backup of your backup. Time Machine is good when it works. However, you may not find out that your TM is corrupt or otherwise unusable until you need. Then it is too late.

Have you tried freeing up some disk space before updating? Once you free up a little more space, give this a try. Seems to have worked for several people.

 

[anarche]

Thank you - I'm cloning the disk now and have cleared about 25 GB - should that be enough? If I did choose the Reinstall, how would I bring back all the docs & data seamlessly?

Edit: Is it automatically a bootable clone? I didn't see any option to specify it be bootable, just selected 'Copy All Files'

 

[Fishrrman]

I would also recommend that (in addition to having a cloned backup) that you run the install from a USB flash drive installer.

You can create one this way:
- have the "full installer" on your internal drive (in your applications folder, or elsewhere)
- use a USB flashdrive of 16gb or larger
- use either "Install Disk Creator", "Boot Buddy" or "DiskMaker X" to create the flashdrive.

Then, boot from the flashdrive and run the install that way.

 

[Apple_Robert]

Thank you - I'm cloning the disk now and have cleared about 25 GB - should that be enough? If I did choose the Reinstall, how would I bring back all the docs & data seamlessly?

Edit: Is it automatically a bootable clone? I didn't see any option to specify it be bootable, just selected 'Copy All Files'

It is automatically a bootable clone.