Aloha izo1,
Before my inquiry, just wanted to say Happy New Year to you and and everyone on this thread whose posts have been an invaluable source in acquiring and more importantly maintaining a stable Asus Sage 10g build. I wanted to ask if you would kindly post your EFI for Big Sur. I am considering a move to Big Surf from Catalina but wanted to make sure I have the necessary qualifications to do so. Do you also have any other considerations you could share to negate unnecessary grief? Thank you again for your time and efforts!
No problem, we can thank all the other people helping and still going at it
I will post the latest Big Sur EFI end of the week, pending some minor tweaks. I am still not full time on Big Sur because of software issues with Adobe (especially After Effects) which stops me from working, but it has been stable under Big Sur other than that.
I would say, you can update directly from Catalina to Big Sur without issues, but you need to have the latest EFI for that.
I would also advise that you keep a backup clone of your main drive.
I use CloneZilla with a USB stick (keep in mind both drives HAVE to be exact size, or the target drive has to be bigger). Ie some SSDs are 1024MB vs 1000MB. If this is the case for your target drive, use Carbon Copy Cloner (latest version). For example, the 970 Pro 1TB NVME that I have is 1024MB and an 860 EVO SSD is 1000MB so I can't use Carbon Copy Cloner. Example if you have a 970 Evo Plus it is 1000MB and I can clone to the 860 EVO SSD because its also 1000MB. CloneZilla just makes things super easy. But also remember you have to use a wired keyboard for CloneZilla since there is no Bluetooth support (I asked the devs to add BT keyboard support since it runs on Linux and they did but it still doesn't work).
I would also advise having an internal hard drive for Time Machine (2TB+, they are cheap) just in case you ever need to restore the OS from a Time Machine backup (which is possible and I have done it in the past on a Hackintosh because I lost my main clone drive). So 1x Time Machine backup for hourly backups and then 1x main clone drive that you can keep safe. For the clone drive I do that backup right before I do major OS updates, ie .2 or .3, but sometimes I skip it. But I think its essential to do a clone backup right before a new OS > OS, ie Catalina > Big Sur because the changes are so big it may cause issues so you have to reclone back.
So steps:
1) Clone your main OS with CloneZilla or Carbon Copy Cloner to a fresh SSD of the same size
2) Unplug your cloned target drive
3) Update your EFI with the one I will post later in the week (also make sure Catalina boots fine)
4) Direct update from Catalina to Big Sur from the OS
Keep in mind that Big Sur during updates (It will reboot multiple times) will not auto select the Preboot drive like Catalina used to do, so you may have to manually select your "Macintosh HD" drive from OpenCore. You have to do this multiple times so keep watching your monitor.
But other than that, upgrading from Catalina > Big Sur has been smooth for me. Just make sure you have a 1:1 cloned working backup of your main OS drive "just in case"....better off spending $80 for a 1TB SSD for backup than losing hours reinstalling everything. My macOS is very customized and I'd hate to lose all the settings and time.
Here are the USB Sticks I have available handy for troubleshooting/updating procedures:
1) OpenCore Boot USB (for testing and then moving to main SSD EFI) and also booting into Recovery Mode where you can restore from a Time Machine backup if necessary
2) FAT32 MBR formatted stick for updating BIOS with BIOS FlashBack
3) CloneZilla USB stick
4) Auxilary USB stick for storing files such as BIOS .cmo files and and other backups of OpenCore.
I also store my EFI backups on Dropbox and I date them in order so I can always go back a generation if needed or if I lose USB sticks I can recreate the EFI boot USB on another Mac.
You can put a $80-$90 1TB SATA SSD inside of a USB3 enclosure for your Clones. I was using
this but it seems discontinued. SSD wise, just make sure it's exactly the same size as your main OS drive.