MacBook installing Mavericks instead of Yosemite.

[Gibson88]

I installed Yoaemite on my Mac the day it launched, I just done a upgrade from the App Store.

Today I wanted to do a clean install, so I held Command+R down on boot and entered the recovery software. I clicked Disk Utility and formatted my hard drive, then when I went to do a fresh install but my Mac is downloading Mavericks instead of Yosemite.

Does anyone know why this is? I've used this method before since Apple started doing download only operating systems.

 

[simonsi]

Because your machine shipped with Mavericks, has always been thus, cmd-r gets you the original os shipped, not the latest available.

 

[Weaselboy]

I installed Yoaemite on my Mac the day it launched, I just done a upgrade from the App Store.

Today I wanted to do a clean install, so I held Command+R down on boot and entered the recovery software. I clicked Disk Utility and formatted my hard drive, then when I went to do a fresh install but my Mac is downloading Mavericks instead of Yosemite.

Does anyone know why this is? I've used this method before since Apple started doing download only operating systems.

This is odd. A command-r boot to the local recovery partition should get you an install that matches the recovery version (Yosemite in your case). If you did command-option-r that would bypass the local recovery version and take you back to what came from the factory.

If there was not Yosemite recovery volume present it would skip the local recovery and go to Internet recovery. Sounds like this is what happened to you.

Are you sure you had a local recovery hd partition on there after the Yosemite install? the command "diskutil list" in Terminal would show the 650MB partition.

 

[Gibson88]

This is odd. A command-r boot to the local recovery partition should get you an install that matches the recovery version (Yosemite in your case). If you did command-option-r that would bypass the local recovery version and take you back to what came from the factory.

If there was not Yosemite recovery volume present it would skip the local recovery and go to Internet recovery. Sounds like this is what happened to you.

Are you sure you had a local recovery hd partition on there after the Yosemite install? the command "diskutil list" in Terminal would show the 650MB partition.

When I formatted the SSD I wiped the whole thing not just the partition I have OS X on, could that be the issue?

 

[dastinger]

That's exactly the issue. If everything went fine when you first upgraded, a recovery partition with Yosemite was created on your SSD and that is what would be used to make a clean install. If you wiped the whole SSD and not only the partition where OS X was installed, then the recovery partition is gone as well so your Mac is connecting to the internet to download OS X. Your Mac shipped with Mavericks so Mavericks is the OS X version that will always be downloaded.

Easy way out is to use another Mac to download Yosemite and then use one of the many methods there is to create a bootable USB drive in order to install Yosemite or go ahead with Mavericks and use your own Mac to download Yosemite and create the USB bootable drive. Then just reformat the SSD and install Yosemite.

 

[Weaselboy]

When I formatted the SSD I wiped the whole thing not just the partition I have OS X on, could that be the issue?

Yup. Ordinarily you would command-r boot then just wipe Macintosh HD where the OS is and reinstall. That would get you the same OS again and not take you back to Mavericks.

I am still puzzled though. A command-r would actually have you running off the local drive's recovery partition and you would be unable to erase the whole drive from there. It would throw an error saying it could not unmount the drive since you are booted to it.

 

[dastinger]

I am still puzzled though. A command-r would actually have you running off the local drive's recovery partition and you would be unable to erase the whole drive from there. It would throw an error saying it could not unmount the drive since you are booted to it.

I didn't think about this. Anyway, when I first upgraded to Yosemite I experienced some bugs so I decided to do a clean install. But the Yosemite recovery did not exist. I still had the Mavericks recovery partition. So, maybe, this is a bug. Wouldn't surprise me given the crazy amount of bugs this release has :/

 

[Gibson88]

Well when I formatted the whole SSD I did so as Mac OS Extended (Journaled). Is that right, also I couldn't have messed anything up by doing so could I?

 

[Weaselboy]

Well when I formatted the whole SSD I did so as Mac OS Extended (Journaled). Is that right, also I couldn't have messed anything up by doing so could I?

That would be the correct format.

 

[pommephone]

Because your machine shipped with Mavericks, has always been thus, cmd-r gets you the original os shipped, not the latest available.

The OP had already installed Yosemite and should have had a Yosemite Recovery HD. Same thing happened to me- still had Mavericks Recovery HD after installing Yosemite. In my case, downloading and re-installing Yosemite from the App Store fixed it, and now I have a Yosemite Recovery HD.