Help downgrading, please...

[mac98aop]

I've decided I want to downgrade back to Mavericks.

I tried to boot with Command+R from TimeMachine, but it says the most recent full backup was 2013? What's that about, as I backup every Friday night (or so I thought?)

Next, I tried to use the Carbon Copy Clone that I made just before updating....

I plug in the external SSD, and boot from that. When I then open CCC, it tells me that the internal SSD I select as the destination volume, is 'unwritable.'

Do I need to erase it from Disk Utility first, and then will it let me copy the external clone SSD over to the internal SSD?

Any help gratefully received please.

Thanks

Adam

 

[mac98aop]

Now wondering if the instructions as pictured, using Disk Utility, will work? Will this copy my clone, to my internal SSD and boot from there when I turn on?

 

[mac98aop]

... and, when I hover over the internal SSD in the Disk Utility sidebar, it does come up as [Read Only] but not sure why? It wasn't when I bought it from Crucial!!

 

[Shirasaki]

It is obvious that Mavericks does not know anything about El Capitan so your time machine backup will be the last one you have backed up before installing Yosemite. Same can be applied to the date you upgrade to El Capitan.

 

[jasnw]

I just went through this exercise (El Cap fallback to Mavericks) and had similar issues. I was able to use Disk Utility after booting into the external (Mavericks) USB drive to repartition my internal drive (only way I could find to erase it) and then use CCC to install the copy of Mavericks on the USB drive on the now-clean internal drive. I don't have an internal SSD, so you might have other odd issues going on, but this worked for me. Make sure that you also reload the recovery drive - CCC will ask about that after it has recovered your main filesystem.

The time-consuming part was recovering the files created during the period I was using (suffering with) El Capitan after I was back on Mavericks. I used CCC to make a backup of my main user directory before falling back to Mavericks and then copied (manually, to avoid accidental contamination by files tied to El Capitan stuff) the files I wanted from that after I fell back.

And welcome back to Mavericks!