Macbook Pro wont restore [error 3]

Question

Macbook Pro wont restore [error 3]

I recently had to reformat my hard drive because it would not boot, after doing so I realized that on my Macbook (mid 2010 Macbook pro) does not have internet recovery build into the bios. So I went and found a guide from apple as how to make a High Sierra bootable usb thumb drive. After making one I booted from it and started the install however consistently I get the error in the picture every time. I've have tried 5+ times and after each time I remove the hard drive and reformat/wipe it and I have even tried a new USB and remaking the bootable drive but to no avail. PLEASE HELP.

MacBook (Starting Late 2009)

Posted on Dec 27, 2018 8:13 AM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

Applefannymanny Author

Level 1

8 points

Dec 28, 2018 10:28 AM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder

I did and on both the El Capitan and High Sierra bootable drive they would not format the drive in specifically OS Journaled. But it would format fine when I removed the drive and hooked it up to another computer I believe I have found the issue.

https://www.ifixit.com/Answers/View/368363/Disk+Utility+on+Internet+Recovery+will+not+format+GUID+++Mac+OS+Extend

If you view the "Answer" they say that it is the hard drive cable which would make sense because only my cable is not reading correctly however externally with a different cable it works fine. I'm going to order one and I'll update this thread once it arrives if you think that could be the issue.

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Answer 2

Dec 28, 2018 10:04 AM in response to Applefannymanny

the standard High Sierra Disk Utility presentation is the completely-useless Volume view:

the required view to actually accomplish anything is Device View:

You need to select the drive by Hardware-Name to do anything useful other than First Aid.

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Answer 3

Dec 28, 2018 8:44 AM in response to Applefannymanny

What format is the drive involved?

El Capitan requires GUID partition map and cannot install on a APFS Volume or a Windows New Technology File System (NTFS) Volume.

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Answer 4

Dec 28, 2018 9:33 AM in response to Applefannymanny

The other way to interpret those messages is that the Installer itself is damaged.

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Answer 5

Dec 28, 2018 9:40 AM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder

I don't know if this is normal, or could have anything to do with this issue, but while using the El Capitan recovery usb and the High Sierra neither would allow me to reformat the drive in Mac OS Extended journaled. It would always error out, it would allow me to erase in different formats but not on Journaled. The only way I could reformat my hard drive to Mac OS Extended Journaled was to plug it into a different Mac. Im just super confused.

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Answer 6

Dec 27, 2018 8:25 AM in response to Applefannymanny

What MacOS were you running before?

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Answer 7

Dec 27, 2018 8:57 AM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder

I'm not sure, it is for a friend who is older, probably a yosemite. But high sierra should be compatible with a mid 2010 macbook pro right?

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Answer 8

Dec 27, 2018 9:38 AM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder

I think you are correct, however, it wont let me download el capitan and gives the reason being that, "OS X can't be installed on "Macintosh HD" because the version of macOS is too new."

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Answer 9

Dec 27, 2018 9:44 AM in response to Applefannymanny

You probably have the debris from your previous install attempt sitting there. MacOS hates to try to install over another version.

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Answer 10

Dec 27, 2018 10:16 AM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder

There is a "trick" that MacOS has always used to do its installs. It uses a stripped-down version of the incoming system (and only that system) to do the new Install.

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