It took me longer to reboot my well-out-of-Applecare 2014/2015 Mac Mini after a Monterey (OSX 12.1. Not even the upgrade to 12.2!) install than it did to:
- Say "f-it, this stinks."
- Pull a Crucial SSD drive from an unused Linux box
- Find my Mac-friendly tool set – it, like the alphabet, contains all the answers for the questions you might ask during this process. This Kobalt 20-Piece Kit does the trick (and more) if you can find it.
- Watch this video – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDCt9M1KaIw
- Do the full upgrade with three brief pauses. I did not need the coat hanger trick. A few good pushes with the fingers on one hand was enough to dislodge the logic board.
- Cut, crimp, and run new cat6 from switch to entertainment center
- Run an Internet Recovery install (of Monterey)
- Set up two user accounts
- Transfer a full Photos library
As a parent with a toddler obsessed with trucks (20, to be exact), NASA and SpaceX launches, and (this month) Rush (The Professor!) concerts, the minutes saved on the reboots and youtube loading is worth its weight in gold-pressed latinum. The performance change is dramatic and the upgrade is completely worth your time.
Mark or Marc. I did not dig harder. Bless this man.