Ok will have to try this when I get home from work tonight. Ok say this finally works and I put Lion on my iMac, can I go to Mavericks or is my only upgrade option El Capitan?
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Having a heck of a time installing an OS on a new SSD.
- Thread starter GameGuru38
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Ok will have to try this when I get home from work tonight. Ok say this finally works and I put Lion on my iMac, can I go to Mavericks or is my only upgrade option El Capitan?
It depends. If you have previously "purchased" Mavericks under your AppleID, it will be listed in your purchase history in the App Store app and you will be able to download and install it from there. If you have not previously purchased it, it is no longer available, so you will need to go with El Capitan.
Two questions real fast if you don't mind (I just want to be ready when I get home tonight and try this):
1. Does the "OS X Recovery Disk Assistant v1.0" prepare the drive itself or do I have to make it GPT and GUID if I am using a different USB thumb drive than one I already prepared?
2. If this works and I successfully install Lion, will I be able to download from the App Store the El Capitan Installer and create a USB thumb drive so I can do a clean install? I hate in place installs and I have nothing on this Mac so I won't be losing anything.
1. Once you boot that recovery utility you will be able to use Disk Utility to erase the new SSD to Mac OS journaled and you will then be able to download and install Lion. It will be guid by default.
2. Yep. That will work.
2. Yep. That will work.
I installed the SSD in about a half hour, today is day three in trying to get OS X on the SSD (this is pre internet recovery and since it is a new drive there is no recovery partition. I only have a Windows 10 PC to do this from as my wife's Mac Mini (2007) can only have Lion so I can't download El Capitan on it.
I finally am going to try making a Lion recovery on the Mac Mini and install Lion on the iMac and upgrade from there.
I hope that works, nothing I have done has worked so far.
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Ok once I have a Lion installation USB thumb drive do I hold "C" on the keyboard during boot or "option" officially?
Yeah I was wondering which one was the real way to do it. Holding "C" always gave me the blinking question folder and "option" always gave me the slash circle. Did the same with the DVD and all the USB thumb drive versions I tried.
Ok I created the Lion Install USB and launched it from my Mac and go to OS X Utilites, formatted my SSD perfected, went to install OS X and right after I put in my Apple ID it says:
"This item is temporarily unavailable. Try again later."
I am connected to the internet, tried both by WiFi and ethernet but it says the same thing. What to do now ha ha.
"This item is temporarily unavailable. Try again later."
I am connected to the internet, tried both by WiFi and ethernet but it says the same thing. What to do now ha ha.
Have you ever "purchased" Lion with that AppleID? You will need to have done so to be able to download the installer.
Yep, just did last night. Hoping by today it would have changed but not so now I am on the phone with Apple seeing what I can do. I messaged the eBay seller who sold me the computer to see if they have removed this iMac from their device list but haven't heard from them yet.
Hmmm.... sounds like maybe a temporary issue with Apple's servers then. You are definitely on the right path now with that USB key.
There is nothing the old owner would need to do that would impact this.
Ok the issue is once I bought Lion from Apple they send me a redemption code within 24 hours (it's been 9 now) and I have to log into the App Store from another Mac (will use my wife's Mac Mini) and redeem the code. They said then I should be able to install just fine.
Now I just have to wait for the code haha.
