MacOS can't be recovered; stuck on progress bar

[zee11]

Hi, I was hoping someone could help me figure out my issue because even the Apple Phone Support guy couldn't.

I have a very old MacBook Pro Retina 15" Mid-2012 (10,1) that stopped starting up. Nothing I tried worked so I gave up on it and used my iMac and iPad mainly.

Months later, I decided I wanted to fix this issue. So I bought a brand new SSD, switched it out, and attempted to enter recovery mode. When I tried to recover, by pressing CMD + R, I was taken straight to Internet Recovery Mode. I assume that means my Recovery Partition is damaged or doesn't exist since this is a brand new SSD. I have a very fast wifi connection and my wifi was still able to connect but just for extra safety, I plugged in an ethernet cord. I saw the spinning globe and then I was taken to an Apple Logo with a spinning loading icon. After a long time, nothing happened and my computer shut down, while it was still plugged in so I know the battery didn't die.)

My next step was to create a bootable drive using my iMac. I tried this with BOTH Catalina and High Sierra. I used the instructions and terminal prompts on Apple's website to create may drive. I plugged it in, started up the MacBook, pressed OPT/ALT, saw my drive and selected it. I was plugging in to the ethernet again, but I also connected my wifi. I got the the progress bar page and eventually it reached about 85% of the way there and then it would stop. It would stay like that until my computer shut down for no reason. I would start it up and be presented with the flashing file folder with the question mark image.

I was so confused I didn't know what to do so I tried random things. The new SSD I bought came with an enclosure so that I could take my old SSD and make it into an external SSD. Using that enclosure, I formatted it so that it was empty, put it back in my MacBook and tried all these steps again to come up with the same result.

I also tried safe mode, resetting my PRAM/NVRAM, my SMC...everything I did resulted in the same issue. I just can't seem to get past the loading bar. Hope someone can help me out!

Ps. yes, I know I should buy a new MacBook but I'm a broke student lol. First time posting in MacRumors Forum, sorry if it's long!

 

[UrsaMinor]

It could be the hard drive cable, but try this:

Go back into Internet Recovery. Is the installer Catalina? If so, go into Disk Utility and format the drive with the APFS using a GUID Partition Map. When it's complete, run a disk Health Check. If that all goes well, then proceed with the Catalina install.

 

[UrsaMinor]

Another possibility is to install the operating system on the SSD via the iMac. The general procedure is to connect the SSD to the iMac, download the operating system, run the operating system installer, then choose the SSD as the drive to install the operating system on. Once that is complete, test that the SSD boots on the imac by using the Option key on startup. If it does boot with the SSD, then pop the SSD into the Macbook.

 

[zee11]

Another possibility is to install the operating system on the SSD via the iMac. The general procedure is to connect the SSD to the iMac, download the operating system, run the operating system installer, then choose the SSD as the drive to install the operating system on. Once that is complete, test that the SSD boots on the imac by using the Option key on startup. If it does boot with the SSD, then pop the SSD into the Macbook.

I solved it! I first tried to partition the drive to APFS using the GUID Partition Map but that failed. Then I tried installing the OS on the SDD externally but I either ran into the issue where Catalina would not want to install on the SSD or Mojave said it was too old.

My workaround was using a program called Carbon Copy Cloner. It basically allowed me to duplicate parts of my iMac's hard drive to my SSD. I took the external drive apart and exchanged the SSD's once more and initially it still failed. BUT by copying all the root files, I was able to restore my Recovery Partition which allowed me to reinstall the OS. That failed at first because it said my macOS was damaged. I wiped the SSD in recovery mode, installed the OS and it finally worked. Thanks for the help, I wouldn't have thought to just copy the contents around.