My son's mid 2012 MacBook Pro HDD bit the dust. I replaced it with a Samsung 850 EVO SSDand created a bootable USB with El Capitan OS. When I try to boot up to USB using the Option key, it immediately asks for the Network and then goes to online recovery and then errs out.. I can't get an option to boot from USB... I used Transmac to format the USB and create a recovery disk. I did this from a WIN10 PC. Any suggestions on how to get his new SSD up and running?
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Can't boot from USB
- Thread starter jasadasmom
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Probably the best way is to do an internet install and then restore from backup. While Transmac claims to read, write, and format Mac drives, I suspect it’s the culprit here. It’s not doing something right—probably using the wrong partitioning scheme (should be GUID partition table).
Unfortunately, he has my mac at uni and I only have access to a PC here. Plus, there is no backup to restore from, HDD died when he was updating to Sierra and he didn't get any data off it before it bit the dust... I'll check the partition again... Any other ideas would be appreciated..
I'm not ragging on you, but systems always fail, hard drives fail, SSDs fail. Your son needs a backup strategy, and as a Mac user there is no excuse for not using Time Machine. All he has to do is plug in an external disk periodically.
You know what I would do? I'd give it back to your son and let him take care of it. Really. He's at university. I guarantee he has friends and/or school tech support who can help him.
You know what I would do? I'd give it back to your son and let him take care of it. Really. He's at university. I guarantee he has friends and/or school tech support who can help him.
I think the MBP is trying to go to Internet Recovery to download the Recovery software to install the OS that shipped with the 2012 MBP (probably OS 10.7 Lion), the system can't write the Recovery software to the SSD because it is not formatted for Mac OS Extended (Journaled) resulting in the error you are seeing. You need to be able to connect a external bootable Mac drive that can format the SSD.
Do you have a Time Machine backup from your Mac (not El Capitan - it had a bug and could not boot into Recovery from the TM BU) or any other external bootable Mac drive? The bootable Mac system would have to be 10.7.4 or more recent.
I agree that I have not heard of USB drives created with Transmac working properly.
I agree. Buy another external hard drive at least twice as large as the SSD. Use internet recovery to install a bootable OS on the external drive. Then boot from that and install the OS on the SSD. Once complete, erase the external and use it as a time machine disk.
You can't create bootable Mac media using a PC (as you found out).
Some options:
- Try to boot to internet recovery, then install a clean copy of the OS (this leaves other stuff on the drive alone)
- Try to boot to internet recovery, then use Disk Utility to erase the internal drive to HFS+ with journaling enabled, then reinstall the OS (this will WIPE OUT everything that was on the drive)
- Buy a USB flashdrive on ebay with a copy of the OS installer on it (cost about $20). Then boot from the flashdrive and reinstall the OS
- Take it to a brick-n-mortar Apple Store and ask for help....
Some options:
- Try to boot to internet recovery, then install a clean copy of the OS (this leaves other stuff on the drive alone)
- Try to boot to internet recovery, then use Disk Utility to erase the internal drive to HFS+ with journaling enabled, then reinstall the OS (this will WIPE OUT everything that was on the drive)
- Buy a USB flashdrive on ebay with a copy of the OS installer on it (cost about $20). Then boot from the flashdrive and reinstall the OS
- Take it to a brick-n-mortar Apple Store and ask for help....