Issues installing El Capitan on external HD

[esik11]

I am currently running High Sierra but require El Capitan for old software. Reformatted an old external hard drive and created a bootable installer USB. Restarted the computer opening the installer and indicated to install El Capitan on external harddrive. Installer finished and restarted. Upon reboot (holding down option) the external hard drive is not listed as an option. The external drive shows that it only has 300mb on it which does not seem right for a full install of El Capitan.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

 

[CoastalOR]

I am currently running High Sierra but require El Capitan for old software. Reformatted an old external hard drive and created a bootable installer USB. Restarted the computer opening the installer and indicated to install El Capitan on external harddrive. Installer finished and restarted. Upon reboot (holding down option) the external hard drive is not listed as an option. The external drive shows that it only has 300mb on it which does not seem right for a full install of El Capitan.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

I think the problem might have been holding the Option on restart after the full install of El Capitan on a newly formatted drive. Normally after a new install there is a restart and Setup is automatically run to ask things like desired language, transfer data from TM or another drive, and/or account information, network login, and Apple ID. I do not think the installer finish because the Option key was held on restart.

 

[esik11]

Thank you for the reply. I actually had run the install twice: 1. not holding option after restart, 2. holding option after restart. Unfortunately both options were unsuccessful.

 

[esik11]

Tried installing on a different computer with no issue. Must have been a localized issue.

Thank you