When booting to recovery fails you. Can one Mac use another's Sierra install?

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When booting to recovery fails you. Can one Mac use another's Sierra install?

I just purchased a "renewed" mid 2011 Mac mini and instead of booting to a new install setup screen, it booted up a desktop with admin user "user" and no password.

I soon learned that I can't use my VPN like that as that app required a keychain password and neither my apple ID password, my VPN login password nor the blank line that the computer had for a password satisfied this requirement. So I don't trust this install at all.

So, I booted into recovery mode and noticed that the "Install OS" icon was covered with a downward arrow. When I erased the HDD and tried to install Lion as I recently had done on a 2010 mini with hardware problems, it lingered for a couple of seconds with billions or trillions of hours remaining and failed as unable to download. I checked and yes, it was connected to my home WiFi at the time.

I noticed that the 2010 had acquired that same arrow in the process when I had erased the High Sierra some previous dealer had installed on that one and re-installed Lion, then upgraded to Sierra from the Apple Support package. So as a last resort I pulled the HDD from the older mini, connected it through a USB device and used recovery mode disc utility to copy the 2010's HDD to the 2011.

It seems to be working just fine and dandy, but am I somehow flirting with disaster using as OS installation from one Mac on another one? Apple seems to be recognizing it as a different Mac mini.

Mac mini, macOS 10.12

Posted on Feb 2, 2020 7:05 AM

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Answer 1

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HWTech

Level 9

69,350 points

Feb 2, 2020 5:38 PM in response to Robert Peters

To reinstall macOS to this Mini you have a couple of options. The first one is to boot into Internet Recovery Mode (Command + Option + R) to install latest compatible version of macOS.

Or you can create a bootable macOS USB installer (macOS 10.12 Sierra is currently broken) using these instructions:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201372

You should erase the whole physical drive. In later versions of macOS you may need to click on "View" within Disk Utility and select "Show All Devices" so the physical drive appears in the left pane of Disk Utility.

Cloning a drive from another system can work as long as the version of macOS is later than the original shipping OS. You will need to modify the computer name in System Preferences so it doesn't conflict with the other computer.

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Answer 2

Robert Peters Author

Level 3

509 points

Feb 2, 2020 9:33 PM in response to HWTech

Thanks. Never could get an El Capitan flash drive to boot up, but somewhere in all my trying I erased my HDD in Recovery Mode and the Install Mac OS link had somewhere along the line changed to install a fresh download of Sierra. So now I'm good.

As for High Sierra, I remember from my earlier "refreshed" mini that although that ran, it wouldn't get all the updates and always popped up a nag notification that it couldn't download. A security issue to a point and annoying at the same time. And this was on another machine that had originally shipped with Lion. Which can directly upgrade only as far as Sierra. So I figured that High Sierra was one version higher than the old hardware supported.

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When booting to recovery fails you. Can one Mac use another's Sierra install?

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