How to install an OS on a second drive?

Thanks Niel. I downloaded the El Capitan Installer from the App store, but I can't get it to install anything. When I run it, it gives me a choice of disks to install the OS on, which in my case is four different drives (three internal ones plus an external), and I tried to get it to install the OS on each one of them in turn. It lets me choose one, and then it acts like it's going to install the OS on it, but soon after the installation begins it fails.

In every case, it seems to begin installing the OS on the chosen drive (it says "Installing, 17 minutes to go") but after about sixty seconds it quits with the message: "OSX could not be installed on your computer. No packages were eligible for install. Contact the Software manufacturer for assistance."

Only when I tried installing El Capitan on the external drive did I get any other message, and in that case it said "A GUID scheme is required." Well, that's a partition scheme, right? Since partitioning a drive requires a complete erasure of the drive, and I wasn't sure I really wanted to do that yet (yes, I have backups, but these drives all have a ton of stuff on them) I plugged a big empty flash drive into the Mac's front USB port and had Disk Utility do a GUID partitioning on it (one 15-gig partition and one 1-gig partition).

But the El Capitan installer just did the same thing on the flash drive that it did on all the other drives: it ran for a minute, saying it was doing the installation, and then it quit with the same old message that "No packages were eligible for install."

So then I tried the Command-R restart, which took me to a special Utilities window, but I couldn't see any way to launch the downloaded installer from there. If I hit Restore, it tells me that it's going to download things from the Apple website, and then a long and very slow progress bar begins to fill up, but I've tried that method and it doesn't work either.

So I remain stumped. Got any other ideas I might try?

Tom

Thanks Neil, but I think I already downloaded and tried that installer yesterday. The two have exactly the same name, which is InstallMacOSX.dmg. When I run it, it shows me all my drives in a window and says "Select a Destination" to install the OS on. However, on all the drives except the one that is already running El Capitan (in other words, my usual startup disk), it puts a yellow warning symbol and says it can't install OSX because OSX isn't installed (how's that for computer logic).

However, just in case the installer you referred to is different from the one I downloaded and tried yesterday (which might just be an updater instead of a full install, despite having exactly the same name), I'm downloading it again right now from the page you linked to and will give it a try.

The download is creeping along at present, but as soon as it's all here I'll run it.

Tom

Well, I downloaded that OS installer but it won't run. When I double-click on it I get a message that "The following disk images couldn't be opened: Image: InstallMacOSX.dmg. Reason: Image not recognized. "

So that's a bust.

I also have a DiskWarrior flash drive, created by a DW app, that has an OS on it to enable Disk Warrior to start the computer independently and do repairs on it, but it won't start the Mac up either. When I go to the System Preferences panel and choose Startup Disk, the DW drive is shown there as a choice, but if I choose it and hit Restart, I get the message: "You cant' change the startup disk to the selected disk. The bless tool was unable to set the current boot disk."

So that's a bust too.

I tried yet again the method of restarting the computer while holding down Command-R, and then in the Utilities window that appears choosing Restore, but when I activate that system installer, it says "Unable to install the OS because a required download is missing." And naturally it would be too much to ask for the message to let me know just what it is that's missing. That would make everything too easy.

So, between "No packages are eligible for install" (without telling me which "packages" it refers to) and "A required download is missing" (without telling me what download is missing) this computer just flat refuses to accept an OS on any of its drives. All the installers do is throw up these mysterious messages that mean nothing at all to me, and if they don't mean anything to anyone else either, I guess I'll just have to try to live with the glitches that this machine exhibits, because there is no way to fix them.

Thanks for trying to help.

Tom

Many thanks Eau Rouge. I am trying out your suggestion of installing El Capitan from Section 4 of the page that you linked to, and the download of the installer is underway now. My Internet connection is slow and it's taking a while.

While I wait for the download to complete, I have followed your instructions and created a partition on one of my internal drives, a 6 TB drive that I use to back up video from another (similarly sized) drive, and I will attempt to install the OS on that partition. I made sure that the partition is in the OS Extended format, on the GUID partition scheme, and I made it 200 GB in size.

As soon as the OS installer.dmg download is complete, and it puts the OS X El Capitan.app in the Applications folder, I'll use it to try to install El Capitan on the new partition. I will report the results.

OK, I got the El Capitan installer app, and I used it to put OS El Capitan onto the partition that I made on one of my internal hard drives. I also dragged Disk Warrior out of my startup drive's Application folder onto that partition. That way I could restart into the new El Capitan and run Disk Warrior to repair my normal startup drive.

Then I restarted the Mac into the new OS on the partition. Strangely, the desktop on this OS has nothing on it but the Time Machine drive's icon. None of the four internal drives on this Mac appear, not even the "drive" that the new OS is running from.

When I double-click the Time Machine icon, and its window opens, all the other hard drives can be seen in that window's sidebar as "Devices," and that's the only way I can see or open them.

Anyway, I went ahead and launched Disk Warrior and used it to "repair" my startup drive, since at least DW could see all the drives. Then I restarted the computer back into the regular startup drive with the original El Capitan on it. Upon restart, the desktop looked normal, but nothing would work. This desktop is spread across two large monitors, with many aliases and icons all over them, but nothing would respond to double clicking. I fact, clicking on any icon on the desktop only made another icon on the other monitor blink, as though the two were linked, but neither would open. Also, at first the cursor would not move from one monitor across to the other, but would just vanish. Double-clicking on any of the hard drive icons would not open them.

This is the kind of weird behavior that I was getting before in a milder form, and it's the reason I wanted to run Disk Warrior on this drive. But now that I have run Disk Warrior on it, it's worse than ever, and it occurs on every startup or restart.

Even with everything on the desktop inoperative, I found that I was still able to launch programs from the dock, but that was the only way to open anything. Then, after I had opened and closed some apps, the desktop mysteriously came back to life and everything started working normally.

So that is my new normal, now--all screwed up. Now whenever I start up my Mac, I find everything on the desktop dead, the alert sounds beeping away like mad, the cursor vanishing and reappearing, and clicking on any icon only makes some other icon blink and nothing else happens. However, I can still launch programs from the dock, and after I repeatedly do that--open Photoshop, InDesign, Final Cut Studio, Safari, etc. and close them again, eventually the icons on the desktop come back to life and the Mac begins to operate normally.

But this is maddening to say the least. What in the world is wrong with this Mac, and how can I get it to behave?

Any help most appreciated.

Tom

First of all Eau Rouge I want to thank you for taking so much time to help a total stranger with his Mac problems. You are extremely kind and I am most appreciative.

This is a 2010 Mac Pro that my family bought for me, refurbished from Apple, to replace my old, slow Power Mac with a liquid cooling system and so many fans inside that when it’s running it sounds like a vacuum cleaner at close range. I had to wear ear protection when using it, it was glacially slow and everybody felt sorry for me.

When I moved to this Intel Mac, I brought with me my old Adobe Creative Suite 6 (2012) and Final Cut Studio (2009), which will work on this Mac, with this OS, but reportedly will not work if I upgrade to any OS newer than El Capitan. Hence I will be stuck with El Capitan for as long as I work on a Mac.

And I have to work on this Mac since I’ve got so much money invested in the software and what I have produced with it. I have written books (you can see two of them on Amazon: “Never Say Can’t” and “It Wasn’t So Jolly”) and also created numerous videos associated with oil painting (you can see some of the videos on YouTube, such as “Thomas Baker on Glazing” and "Thomas Baker on How to Make Color Charts”).

All this previous work, plus whatever I may come up with in the future, depends on this Mac continuing to run this software and remain functional. So I must live and die on the mountain of El Capitan, and I’m sorry to hear that Apple has tossed this OS on the ash heap and will not do anything to maintain it anymore.

By the way, at the time the first Macs came out I always preferred mastodon skins to deerskin , because they are warmer in the winter, and Zippo lighters beat rubbing sticks together. My little Mac Plus still sits in the corner over there, with all of its floppy disks, and younger visitors to my lair always want to know what it is, and are fascinated when I tell them that it is a prehistoric computer. They think that both me and the Mac Plus belong in a museum, and they may well be right.