Get Mountain Lion install image that my MBP had installed at purchase

[brdeveloper]

Hello,

My Macbook Pro (Early-2013, 15") came with Mountain Lion installed. I'd like to install it on my white macbook, which came with Snow Leopard. My question is: 1) can I obtain a Mountain Lion image considering my MBP came with this OSX version? 2) In terms of licensing, can I install it on another Mac I own?

 

[Fishrrman]

Stop worrying about Mac OS "licensing" -- means nothing.

Having said that, WHAT YEAR is the white MacBook?
That is what "makes the difference" as to which OS will install, and which will not.

If you don't know what year, go into the "System profiler" (they keep changing the name), and look at "hardware".
It should have something that reads "MacBook5,1" (or something similar)
Tell us what the number is.

 

[brdeveloper]

Stop worrying about Mac OS "licensing" -- means nothing.

Having said that, WHAT YEAR is the white MacBook?
That is what "makes the difference" as to which OS will install, and which will not.

If you don't know what year, go into the "System profiler" (they keep changing the name), and look at "hardware".
It should have something that reads "MacBook5,1" (or something similar)
Tell us what the number is.

It's a Macbook 6,1 (2009 Unibody White Macbook). It has High Sierra installed, but I want to configure it for using with an old audio interface, so Mountain Lion seems to be a good choice to get the most stable drivers from my interface.

 

[Fishrrman]

What's the audio interface?
Does it have updated drivers available?

Mountain Lion -is- a good OS.
Although I would consider El Capitan a little better.

If you have an EXTERNAL USB drive available, you could:
1. Use CarbonCopyCloner to clone the contents of the MacBook Pro to the drive
2. Boot the MacBook from the cloned backup
3. Clone the install of ML from the backup to the MacBook.

 

[brdeveloper]

What's the audio interface?
Does it have updated drivers available?

Mountain Lion -is- a good OS.
Although I would consider El Capitan a little better.

If you have an EXTERNAL USB drive available, you could:
1. Use CarbonCopyCloner to clone the contents of the MacBook Pro to the drive
2. Boot the MacBook from the cloned backup
3. Clone the install of ML from the backup to the MacBook.

Fast Track Pro... it's technically supported by Yosemite... perhaps I'll play a bit more with Snow Leopard. This way I can use my Nikon Scanner with it (Nikon Scan software only supports 32-bit OS).

 

[treekram]

There's a few ways that I can think of to get Mountain Lion on your computer:
1) Run Recovery on the MBP and select the option to "Install the macOS that came with your Mac, or the closest version still available." It should give you the option to install to another disk other than the internal one. So you need another disk handy. Just in case, make sure you have a current backup of the computer before proceeding. You can then either move the disk in the MacBook or clone the disk to the MacBook disk.
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204904

2) You can buy Mountain Lion from Apple or another source.
https://www.apple.com/shop/product/D6377Z/A/os-x-mountain-lion

3) You can try looking in the AppStore app under your purchases on the MacBook (presuming that you at some point installed Mountain Lion on it) and see if it's there. On my 2012 Mini which now has High Sierra but came with Mountain Lion, I do see the various OS's I upgraded to in the list (but not the original Mountain Lion). (The list is no longer available in Mojave, BTW.) If it is there, it should download as an app. I'm pretty sure that you would need to create a bootable installer for Mountain Lion.