Bootable drive for 2013 MacBook

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Level 2

239 points

Bootable drive for 2013 MacBook

Hello,

I wanted to clean my old 2013 MacBook Pro and hand it down to my son. I booted into Recovery (command-R) and erased the drive, but Recovery will not install a new copy of MacOS, it tries and then says "MacOS could not be installed."

I tried Internet Recovery, and that starts to download and then also says MacOS could not be installed.

I am able to run Disk First Aid on the drive and it found no problems.

I would like to use my new MacBook Pro to create a bootable USB to reinstall from, but that doesn't even seem possible any more, because you can't download old versions of MacOS from the App Store. I was able to download El Capitan, but that comes as a .dmg, not an .app, and all the instructions for creating a bootable USB assume an .app file.

Does anybody have any advice?

MacBook Pro 15", OS X 10.11

Posted on Mar 24, 2020 6:54 AM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

MrHoffman

Community+ 2024

Level 10

126,031 points

Mar 24, 2020 7:06 AM in response to Matthew Levie

Boot current-version Recovery with Option-Command-R, and try this again.

For this Mac, that should get you macOS Catalina.

Failing that, download macOS Catalina, and build a bootable installer:

How to create a bootable installer for macOS - Apple Support

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Answer 2

Matthew Levie Author

Level 2

239 points

Mar 24, 2020 7:15 AM in response to MrHoffman

Thank you so much!

Option-Command-R is "Internet Recovery," as noted, I already tried it and it failed as well.

I have downloaded El Capitan, but the instructions there don't work, because the Terminal commands are looking for the .app file, and El Capitan downloads as a .dmg, not an .app.

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Answer 3

Mar 24, 2020 9:07 AM in response to Matthew Levie

So to confirm, you specifically selected the option-command-R chord at boot?

That is, you booted Internet Recovery, and specifically requested Catalina from Internet Recovery?

This Mac will boot Catalina. Download and use that. Not an ancient release.

Since you will not be thwarted in your efforts to unnecessarily use an ancient release for no clear reason, mount the DMG, run the installer-creator-app, then you will have the installer (created in Applications) that the previously-linked bootable-media tool can use.

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Answer 4

Matthew Levie Author

Level 2

239 points

Mar 24, 2020 11:12 AM in response to MrHoffman

No, maybe I have not made myself clear. On the 2013 MacBook Pro, I selected option-command-R at reboot, the Internet Recovery screen appeared, and after a few minutes it threw an incomprehensible error and quit. Repeatedly.

I downloaded El Capitan on my new MacBook 2016 Pro, because that seems to be the only version that currently allows a full download. I tried for two days to download an installer for Catalina before figuring that if I could get any version of the OS finally installed, eventually I could upgrade it to Catalina.

I certainly didn't do it because I "would not be thwarted in my efforts to unnecessarily use an ancient release for no clear reason."

Thank you kindly for your help in accessing the .app from the .dmg, I'll try that.

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Bootable drive for 2013 MacBook

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