Install El Capitan with Super Duper

[zarathu]

I have an iMac which I just installed El Capitan from the Apple Store. I had to load Oracle Virtual Box with Windows XP to run an old piece of software that will never be in Mac.

I have just purchased a MBP late 2011 2.6 IG to replace my aging Thinkpad x200(which runs Ubuntu). The MBP has Mavericks 9.5 on it.

Since I made a bootable clone of El Capitan on an external USB 3.0 Drive, my question is whether I can upgrade the MBP using the bootable clone of El Capitan on the portable external USB 3.0 Drive?

 

[CoastalOR]

Since I made a bootable clone of El Capitan on an external USB 3.0 Drive, my question is whether I can upgrade the MBP using the bootable clone of El Capitan on the portable external USB 3.0 Drive?

It should work fine. Connect your bootable clone, then clone the external to the 2011 MBP (keep in mind everything on the 2011 internal will be overwritten with the external files). Be a little patient, the external will boot slower and transfer the clone date slower since your 2011 MBP only has USB2 ports.

 

[MacUser2525]

Since I made a bootable clone of El Capitan on an external USB 3.0 Drive, my question is whether I can upgrade the MBP using the bootable clone of El Capitan on the portable external USB 3.0 Drive?

Should work fine however I would suggest downloading Carbon Copy Cloner and using it once you have booted the external on the new machine to confirm everything is working. CCC will allow you to create the recovery partition on the new machine once cloned. If it does not ask the recovery creation question automatically when cloning clicking on the new machine internal drive in the side bar will allow you to do so.

 

[CoastalOR]

MacUser2525 has an excellent point.

Super Duper does not clone the Recovery partition, which means that the external El Capitan Super Duper clone would not have the El Capitan Recovery partition to clone back to the internal drive. CCC will support cloning the Recovery partition if it is available.

 

[zarathu]

MacUser2525 has an excellent point.

Super Duper does not clone the Recovery partition, which means that the external El Capitan Super Duper clone would not have the El Capitan Recovery partition to clone back to the internal drive. CCC will support cloning the Recovery partition if it is available.

Thanks for your help. There is no recovery partition in the Drive on the iMac. It only has one partition. I was never willing to try to partition a drive which is the base drive. But since I've used super Duper for a long time with a bootable back up, it didn't seem necessary. I could just switch to the back up and start on that. I did err when I said the MBP was 2011, its late 2013.

 

[MacUser2525]

Thanks for your help. There is no recovery partition in the Drive on the iMac. It only has one partition. I was never willing to try to partition a drive which is the base drive. But since I've used super Duper for a long time with a bootable back up, it didn't seem necessary. I could just switch to the back up and start on that. I did err when I said the MBP was 2011, its late 2013.

Well it is not totally necessary sounds like you have your backups situation firmly in place and will like me never use it anyways so could just skip its creation if desired to do so.

 

[CoastalOR]

The Recovery partition is a roughly 650 MB hidden partition installed when the OS is installed. Here is some information about how it is invoked & used:
https://support.apple.com/en-us/ht201314

Having a good bootable clone makes it less critical. Some examples of when people boot into the Recovery partition are when they want to run a terminal command that can't be run on while booted on the mainOS partition (think disable or enable SIP) or reinstalling a fresh copy of the current OS.

 

[zarathu]

The Recovery partition is a roughly 650 MB hidden partition installed when the OS is installed. Here is some information about how it is invoked & used:
https://support.apple.com/en-us/ht201314

Having a good bootable clone makes it less critical. Some examples of when people boot into the Recovery partition are when they want to run a terminal command that can't be run on while booted on the mainOS partition (think disable or enable SIP) or reinstalling a fresh copy of the current OS.

Wow.... I wasn't aware of that. Thanks.

 

[Ebenezum]

OP: If I understand correctly that El Capitan hasn't newer been installed in the MPB and Mavericks is the latest OS installed on it?

If that is the case it could cause problems because it contains older firmware version. Apple started upgrading firmware automatically during the OS install when Yosemite was released.

If I were you I would first install El Capitan on it just in case and afterwards migrate files from the iMac to MBP. I'm not saying that older firmware will certainly cause problems but its better to take no changes.

 

[zarathu]

OP: If I understand correctly that El Capitan hasn't newer been installed in the MPB and Mavericks is the latest OS installed on it?

If that is the case it could cause problems because it contains older firmware version. Apple started upgrading firmware automatically during the OS install when Yosemite was released.

If I were you I would first install El Capitan on it just in case and afterwards migrate files from the iMac to MBP. I'm not saying that older firmware will certainly cause problems but its better to take no changes.

Yes.... The iMac that El Capitan is coming from is a mid-2011 model. The MBP that it is going to is a late 2013 2.6 16 gb RAM(IG) (essentially the same speed machine as the new late 2016 except for the faster discrete graphics card, the internal Iris Pro 5200 on the Haswell chips is way faster than the internal graphic card on the skylake chips, go figure Intel!)

So you are saying I should let the MBP download the upgrade to 11.10, and then migrate all the files over? I wonder if Migration will do the Oracle Virtual Box properly. Its having to re-install Oracle and windows XP and the other programs on windows that I was hoping to avoid.

 

[zarathu]

Now I read that I'm supposed to enable something called TRIM(having to do with how the SSD blocks are managed when a new system is put into it from a carbon copy cloned drive). There is a piece of software for this, but its another $20.

Its beginning to look like the easiest and safest way is to simple let Apple's upgrade for the MBP from a direct DL from the Apple Store and then transferring all the files from the SuperDuper backup necessary would be the best way.

 

[Bruno09]

Hi,

with El Capitan, you do not need any software to enable the Trim.

Open the Terminal, (Applications / Utilities), enter the following command :

sudo trimforce enable

Enter your admin password when prompted (will not be displayed), then hit Enter.

See : https://www.macrumors.com/2015/07/01/os-x-trim-ssd/

 

[CoastalOR]

Now I read that I'm supposed to enable something called TRIM(having to do with how the SSD blocks are managed when a new system is put into it from a carbon copy cloned drive). There is a piece of software for this, but its another $20.

Its beginning to look like the easiest and safest way is to simple let Apple's upgrade for the MBP from a direct DL from the Apple Store and then transferring all the files from the SuperDuper backup necessary would be the best way.

It sounds like you have a late 2013 15" MBP Retina, which means it has Apple Flash storage. TRIM is enabled by default. You do not need to buy software to enable trim. TRIM can be enabled and disabled using Terminal commands as Bruno09 mentioned.

I would recommend downloading El Capitan, doing a fresh install on the MBP (which will also create the Recovery Partition we discussed previously), then using Migration Assistant to move all of your old settings, data, and apps from the external clone.

 

[zarathu]

Hi,

with El Capitan, you do not need any software to enable the Trim.

Open the Terminal, (Applications / Utilities), enter the following command :

sudo trimforce enable

Enter your admin password when prompted (will not be displayed), then hit Enter.

See : https://www.macrumors.com/2015/07/01/os-x-trim-ssd/

Since the Drive in the MBP is already enabled and using Mavericks, when it would get erased prior to installing El Capitan using CCC, from the bootable startup external drive holding El Capitan, would Trim be needed?

This is getting too complicated for someone like me.
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It sounds like you have a late 2013 15" MBP Retina, which means it has Apple Flash storage. TRIM is enabled by default. You do not need to buy software to enable trim. TRIM can be enabled and disabled using Terminal commands as Bruno09 mentioned.

I would recommend downloading El Capitan, doing a fresh install on the MBP (which will also create the Recovery Partition we discussed previously), then using Migration Assistant to move all of your old settings, data, and apps from the external clone.

Yes, thanks all. I believe that is what I will do.

 

[zarathu]

I was not able to get any way to upgrade to El Capitan, since
Apple would simply not allow me to download a previous system, unless my machine would not make the upgrade directly. My previous download on my iMac was compromised by Apple starting a Sierra dl. And so the only way I could try would have been to use a CCC back up to the MBP from the CCC backup on the iMac. Experience over many years has shown me that this might not work and might then require a upgrade to Sierra in the end anyway. A back up to a MBP from a back up of an iMac might have been disastrous.

So I have upgraded to Sierra without problem(10.12.3). Then I ran Migration, and everything that I had in El Capitan seems to work in Sierra. Additionally I now have an additional user: the original user that came with the machine from PowerMax, the user that existed on my iMac, and the eternal guest.