El Capitan - Installation Fails

[Shirasaki]

Shirasaki, what method would you use to copy everything from my HD to an external HD from Terminal? I found this page on using rsync in the terminal, but I'm guessing I would use the rsync -a SourceDirectoryPath DestinationDirectoryPath command? Where the SourceDirectoryPath is my Mac HD and the DestinationDirectoryPath would be my ext HD?

Uh, should be that.

If system is unable to recover, for me I have boot camp installed Windows so I use Windows to backup files I want to external drive, and then format everything during installation. I may use terminal if there is no boot camp available.

 

[chris_thomp]

Alternatively, if I could get my hands on an OS install disk (one that comes with Macs, or used to anyway- haven't bought a Mac in a long time), and installed that OS, would that keep my files or would that be a clean install and wipe everything out?

 

[Shirasaki]

Alternatively, if I could get my hands on an OS install disk (one that comes with Macs, or used to anyway- haven't bought a Mac in a long time), and installed that OS, would that keep my files or would that be a clean install and wipe everything out?

Since install from recovery disk may need you to wipe everything, I think this could mean a clean install.

 

[kintaro81]

how about install a new fresh OS in a USB drive and then import the data from the old disk when it ask it.

once is done and working you could CCC to the internal disk

 

[Cheech9732]

For the group...I attempted the public beta install on a mid-2013 MB Air with a brand new installation of OS X Yosemite. There was absolutely no additional 3rd party software installed...basically like right out of the box. The beta downloaded fine (approx 6GB) and was connected to power supply the entire time. During the installation...around the 12-15 min remaining point...the screen lock came on and then the screen went completely blank. I let it go on fir about another 15 minutes, but realized there was a problem. The system was completely unresponsive and eventually the flashing question mark folder appeared. I've dealt with this problem before on this machine and used Internet Recovery successfully in the past. This time...when I reboot the machine there is NO Apple chime...just the screen lighting up...but still blank. I was running off a WiFi connection that occasionally drops (maybe the root cause of the failure?) but the update successfully downloaded before the installation began. Any suggestions on where to go from here???

 

[chris_thomp]

I was able to resolve my issue by doing the following things:

1. Back up my /Users folder from my Macintosh HD by running the following command in Terminal:
   cp -R -p -v /Volumes/Macintosh\ HD/Users/ /Volumes/Name/Rescued\ Users
   where Name is the name of the external HD. I tried also backing up my /Applications folder as well, but I think the El Capitan installer had run just long enough to wipe it out, so there was nothing to copy. I was fine with this since I can just re-install any apps I needed once I got a fresh install up and running.
   
2. Once everything (I needed) was copied over to my external HD, it was time to make a bootable USB drive with the Yosemite installer on it. I decided I wanted to go back to Yosemite; you can follow directions elsewhere to install the El Capitan Public Beta installer on a USB drive. I have a friend with a Mac who was able to download the Yosemite installer for me. To reformat and put the installer on the USB drive (I used my friend's working Mac to do this part):
   1. Launch Disk Utility with the drive plugged in and select the USB drive from the left sidebar.
   2. Click on the Erase tab and choose Mac OS Extended (Journaled) in the format box and leave the name as Untitled.
   3. Choose the Partition tab and select 1 Partition from the Partition Layout dropdown menu. Click on Options to be sure GUID Partition Table is selected. Set the name to Untitled.
   4. Once the Yosemite installer is done downloading, quit the Installer and name the installer Installer OS X Yosemite.app.
   5. Launch the Terminal app and enter the following command:
      sudo /Applications/Install OS X Yosemite.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/Untitled --applicationpath /Applications/Install OS X Yosemite.app --nointeraction
   6. Once it is finished, it will show Copy Complete. Done. in Terminal
3. Now it was time to do the clean install of Yosemite. I put the USB drive into my computer and booted up while holding OPT down. After some issues I encountered with USB3.0 vs. USB2.0 drives (see link below for full context), I was able to boot from the USB drive. I clicked through the prompts and tried to install Yosemite but an error would come up that said:
   "This copy of the Install OS X Yosemite.app application can't be verified. It may have been corrupted or tampered with during downloading."
   After some researching, I found the following fix:
   1. Open Terminal and type in date.
   2. The output for me showed the date was January 3 2001. To fix this, I entered the following command:
      date 0715012015
      format: date [MM][DD][hh][min][YY]
   3. After pressing Enter and trying the install again, everything proceeded normally and Yosemite installed successfully.

Lesson learned: always have a backup! After I copied all of my files back and set everything up, I backed everything up to Time Machine. Never again.

For full context, see the full discussion over at Apple Developer Forums. Huge thanks to Max108!

 

[S.B.G]

Good deal. I'm glad you were able to get it resolved and save your data at the same time.