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mcsoap

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jul 31, 2012
2
0
Situation:

I bought a MacBook Pro few months back and I put an SSD into it, installed Windows 7, then I removed optical drive and put original HDD into it's place, and formatted the drive to NTFS, removing all other partitions, including recovery.

Now, I am curious about giving MacOS a try since I also bought an iPhone, but I can't convince my MacBook to install original MacOS, because with online recovery, it recognizes that there is a different hard disc (SSD) and refuses to install.

So, is there a way how can I keep current configuration, buy new Mac OS, burn my own DVD, plug in USB optical drive and install Mac OS?

For windows, this is a nobrainer, but I can't figure out how to do that for Mac. I just have a MBPro with an SSD, and I want to install Mac onto it. How do I do it?
 
So, is there a way how can I keep current configuration, buy new Mac OS, burn my own DVD, plug in USB optical drive and install Mac OS?

For windows, this is a nobrainer, but I can't figure out how to do that for Mac. I just have a MBPro with an SSD, and I want to install Mac onto it. How do I do it?

It's very easy to install Mac OS X on from a DVD or (even easier) from a USB flash drive. Just put it in and hold down option at boot and it will detect your bootable DVD/USB.

The tricky part will be to install it on your SSD without overwriting Windows. AFAIK, the OS X installer doesn't know how to resize an NTFS partition, so you'll have to either resize your partition some other way first or just overwrite Windows and reinstall it again later with Boot Camp.
 
It's very easy to install Mac OS X on from a DVD or (even easier) from a USB flash drive. Just put it in and hold down option at boot and it will detect your bootable DVD/USB.

The tricky part will be to install it on your SSD without overwriting Windows. AFAIK, the OS X installer doesn't know how to resize an NTFS partition, so you'll have to either resize your partition some other way first or just overwrite Windows and reinstall it again later with Boot Camp.

Thanks for reply.

Reinstalling windows is not a problem (to keep current configuration means that I don't want to open my MBPro, take both discs out, put the original into its place and put the optical drive back in, just to install the system, and then take it all apart again, replace optical drive with original drive and put SSD in..). I just can't seem to find a way how to buy the OSX, and then put it onto a USB flash drive and proceed to install. Nowhere on apple site I can find a BUY button, or a manual of USB install.

I am new to Apple world, so I am probably missing something essential...
 
You could try Internet Recovery, if your Mac is capable of that.
Or you could, if possible, visit an Apple Store (maybe make an appointment, if you live near busy ones) and ask them for help, since Macs don't come with physical media to restore Mac OS X from since late 2011.
 
I just can't seem to find a way how to buy the OSX, and then put it onto a USB flash drive and proceed to install. Nowhere on apple site I can find a BUY button, or a manual of USB install.

Apple used to sell OS X on a bootable USB drive, but it looks like it's not available any more. AFAIK it's only available as a download through the app store.

If your Mac still covered by Applecare? Hopefully they could help you out in this situation, either sending out a copy of OS X or helping you get Internet Recovery working.
 
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