Q: OS X El Capitan upgrade fails MBP Early 2008

I recently attempted to upgrade to OS X El Capitan from Yosemite on my Early 2008 Macbook Pro. (Which has been maxed out on RAM and the startup disk was replaced with a SSD about a year back.)  Unfortunately, I did not backup the machine prior to the upgrade.  I downloaded the upgrade and initiated the install.  After attempting to install 4 times, the results are always the same.  After 30-45 minutes the install fails and I am presented with this:

If I restart the problem repeats.

I have tried resetting the time and date via terminal, resetting the NVRAM and starting up holding the option key, but it appears my boot drive has been left in an un-bootable state.  I verified the boot disk and repaired it, to no avail. 

At this point, I booted in recovery mode and am imaging the boot disk onto a external hard drive in read and write mode. 

From what I have read, my best course of action at this point is to verify the image was saved properly.  Then, reformat the boot drive.  Then, finish the OS X El Capitan upgrade.  I have downloaded the new version of disk maker x to create the boot disk on a 8GB thumb drive. 

Any other suggestions that I may have missed, or am I on the right track?