

The mac you tried with that is running Catalina must have come with an OS newer than El Capitan pre-installed. Installers for older macs and not actually install the OS. Unfortunately Apple have not taken in to consideration that users may just want to create bootable Macs cannot run an older OS than the one they came preinstalled with. That are capable or running El Capitan, this includes macs that have been upgraded to later OS's.īut crucially does not include macs that came preinstalled from new with a new OS. InstallMacOSX.pkg to the Install OS X El Capitan.app, this can only be done on macs To create a bootable USB fo Mac OS X El Capitan you need to be able to convert the it would be ideal if I can download it from somewhere.

I'm avoiding having to create a new partition on my latest MacBook for El Capitan, just to create a bootable image disk. and my iMac can not run anything newer than El Capitan.

When I download disk image for the "Install Max OS X" all (that creates bootable installer) for OSX El Capitan or Yosemite, I can not run it on my MacBook with Catalina (don't know why. For example, the instructions here do not cover my need Apple suggests I create a bootable USB, which can be used to install, but I am unable to as I am hitting deadends. While trying to reset my old iMac (early 2009), I tried to "Reinstall macOS" from the recovery mode, and got the "Mac OS X could not be installed on the computer", without giving me any specific reason or details.

How to create bootable USB disk for El Capitan from latest macOS Catalina Hi There, What's the official way to create a boot drive for an older OS? There has to be a way other than buying an old disk. It says "This version of macOS can't be installed on this machine" - so either I'm doing something fundamentally wrong or the article is wrong.Īlso I tried to download High Sierra from that page to see if that works but since that is downloaded from the App Store I can't download it because my OS is newer. Of course my Mac with Catalina wouldn't run it as it's already higher. I downloaded the image, mounted it and double-clicked the package as described in the support article. To achieve this I followed HT201372 - I started in the El Capitan section as it's the oldest OS available - the 2011 Macs should be able to run up to High Sierra. So the safe bet would be to install an OS from an external source. This old mac seems to boot into internet recovery (so afaik it used to run at least 10.7 or 10.8 at some point) but after connecting to my Wi-Fi the display stays white. As soon as I get one I want to be ready to install an OS from a stick. I want to create a bootable USB device for an old 2011 MacBook Pro with no hard drive installed.
