Can't Install el Capitan on InternalSSD

[strickolas]

So I have recently cracked open a Macbook Pro mid 2012, and swapped out the optical drive for a Corsair 120GB SSD. I have downloaded the "Install El Capitan" app from the app store and burned it to a thumb drive using a sudo command that I've seen on the forums. Tried alt-booting to the thumb drive, and downloading the OS to the SSD, while the SSD was formatted for HFS+, and even gone as far as trying to format it for FAT, although I know it doesn't help very much.

After 6 or 7 hours of installing, I get the ghostbuster symbol when I try to boot to that drive (buster symbol, circle with a slash thru it). Luckily, I can still boot to my hard drive, but that isn't what i want. Sometimes, if I shut the macbook pro's lid so that it falls asleep, the installer freezes, crashes and then gives me a black screen with no chime on boot. I have to re-seat the ram to fix the problem so that it boots again.

Anybody have any insight or ideas on how to get el Capitan on my SSD? I don't understand why this is giving me so much trouble.

Thanks ahead,
-Ns

 

[TonyK]

Just upgraded my MP2008 to 10.11 and while doing it had to manually set the date and prevent auto-updating.

There is a terminal command that can be Googled for if you can't get to the Date/Time System Preference pane.

 

[strickolas]

I'll give that a try, but just as an update, I just tried installing Linux and Windows on the MBP and I can't get either of those to work. Any idea as to why that might be happening?

 

[TonyK]

Sounds like a MBR (master boot record) problem. Could also be a bad SSD.

Re: the date. Had to set my date to 1/1/2015. Then it installed 10.11 just fine.

 

[strickolas]

Should I use Diskmaker x5 to create an el Capitan install disk? Or can I boot into recovery mode and work from there? I had uBuntu running just an hour ago off the SSD, and I'm not exactly sure what a MBR is.

**Update**
Setting the date to 1/1/15 doesn't work, in fact, it doesn't even let the installer begin. I used the code:
date 0101000015

Which is the month, day, time, and last two digits of year, respectively.

Still have no idea why this isn't working. I was thinking, maybe I should torrent a copy of MacOS Lion, throw it on a thumb drive and try installing that.

 

[TonyK]

On my system I was able to use the Date/Time in the System Preferences pane and I ran the installer from the drive. It should not be this difficult really.

 

[strickolas]

On my system I was able to use the Date/Time in the System Preferences pane and I ran the installer from the drive. It should not be this difficult really.

I've already tried this method and it hasn't worked. I'm open to other ideas tho.

 

[Fishrrman]

Do you have a -different- drive (i.e., external drive) that you could attempt an install onto?

If you do, and if the installer can install to that drive, you could do this:
1. Install a clean copy of the OS onto an external drive (or even a USB flash drive of sufficient capacity)
2. Boot from the external drive, create a "temporary" account so that you can use the finder, etc.
3. Put CarbonCopyCloner onto the external drive. DON'T put anything else on it.
4. BACK UP the contents of the internal drive, then do this:
5. Use Disk Utility to re-initialize the internal drive
6. Launch CCC and clone the external drive (with the fresh install) to the INTERNAL drive. Now you have El Cap on the internal drive, too.
7. Power down, disconnect the external drive, and see if you can boot from the internal drive.
8. Do you get a good boot? OK, connect your backup and use Migration Assitant to restore from it.

Additional tip:
BEFORE you do the above, I would use CCC to create a bootable cloned backup of the existing internal drive to a backup drive. Then use this with Migration Assitant after you get the internal drive setup. I've never used Time Machine and don't care for it.
CCC is FREE to download and use for 30 days. It can even "clone over" the recovery partition.

 

[simonsi]

Why don't you upgrade the OS on your internal drive to EC, then simply clone the internal drive to the SSD?

Or take a TM backup on an external drive, boot from that, backup to the SSD then upgrade it from there

Or just clone the existing OS drive to the SSD, then upgrade to EC once there...

If you are having weird problems then you may have an issue with the SSD, the adapter or the drive cable...typically they can result in the SSD being put into read-only mode, which means the OS can't write to it, install anything etc...

 

[strickolas]

simonsi, thanks for the response!

So the reason I haven't done any of that is becasue I can't get the storage on my Harddrive down to >120 GB, I've tried deleting everything but I can't shrink it down that low to clone it. And The SSD works fine, I think. I had it running Ubuntu and it successfully stores and plays videos, music, etc... I don't know if I should just give up and use it to run programs instead

 

[simonsi]

simonsi, thanks for the response!

So the reason I haven't done any of that is becasue I can't get the storage on my Harddrive down to >120 GB, I've tried deleting everything but I can't shrink it down that low to clone it. And The SSD works fine, I think. I had it running Ubuntu and it successfully stores and plays videos, music, etc... I don't know if I should just give up and use it to run programs instead

If you use Carbon Copy Cloner to clone it, it will allow you to selectively clone files and folders AND wil warn you if you are rendering the target unbootable by not copying any particular file or folder...so you can clone everything except certain user folder contents for example and use that to clone the system but also cut down on the size to fit the SSD capacity.

 

[catlog1]

So I have recently cracked open a Macbook Pro mid 2012, and swapped out the optical drive for a Corsair 120GB SSD. I have downloaded the "Install El Capitan" app from the app store and burned it to a thumb drive using a sudo command that I've seen on the forums. Tried alt-booting to the thumb drive, and downloading the OS to the SSD, while the SSD was formatted for HFS+, and even gone as far as trying to format it for FAT, although I know it doesn't help very much.

After 6 or 7 hours of installing, I get the ghostbuster symbol when I try to boot to that drive (buster symbol, circle with a slash thru it). Luckily, I can still boot to my hard drive, but that isn't what i want. Sometimes, if I shut the macbook pro's lid so that it falls asleep, the installer freezes, crashes and then gives me a black screen with no chime on boot. I have to re-seat the ram to fix the problem so that it boots again.

Anybody have any insight or ideas on how to get el Capitan on my SSD? I don't understand why this is giving me so much trouble.

Thanks ahead,
-Ns

Had a similar problem when trying to install new ssd 240gb crucial bx500 on macbook 2008 late aluminium. Bootable el capitan usb created using createinstallmedia from a working elcapitan install will not show startup manager. Just a grey screen with a working mouse pointer. Put back the old 250 hdd into internal and usb elcapitan works fine with startup manager showing install elcapitan and macintosh hd.
Luckilly i had a bootable maverick and it was able to show at startup the install maverick bootmanager. Went to disk utility. Format the ssd and install Maverick ok. From inside maverick , install elcapitan worked and booted fine from ssd. With elcapitan installed on the ssd , i tried inserting usb elcapitan and it was able to show the ssd of macintosh hd and the install elcapitan boot manager. Went to disk utility and partition as usual, and install elcapitan and booted fine again.