Catalina installation problems

Question

Level 1

8 points

Catalina installation problems

Hi, I don't know how much I'm in trouble.

Let me explain.

I tried the clean installation of Catalina on my MacBook Pro 13” mid 2012. I downloaded Catalina, put on the SD card (yes my Mac still has the slot) with the Terminal. I restarted with the alt button pressed. I formatted my internal SSD (Samsung 840 evo) with the APFS format and then I tried to install Catalina on it. The process stops two minutes from the end whit this error “internal error while copying the installer to the target”.

Here the final part of the log:

I thought the installer file may be corrupt, today I will try to download it again. Or it could be the APFS format because in the error log in some parts it says that it failed to convert things because it is not in Mac OS extended format. Is it possible to reformat it in Mac OS extended? obviously if this is the problem.

Unfortunately I don’t have a backups with time machine but I have an external case where I can put the SSD to connect it to another PC like an external HD if needed.

And the old HD too that I can temporarily replace the SSD, if I have to do something on it. If I create an image disc from the old HD and try to restore the SSD can be fix? I don’t know and I hope the problem is smaller than I expect.

If anyone can help me I would be very grateful.

MacBook Pro

Posted on May 12, 2020 4:32 AM

Reply

Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

dialabrain

Level 10

125,375 points

May 12, 2020 5:17 AM in response to SlevinFF

Option-⌘-R is supposed to install the latest version of macOS you can run which is Catalina.

Shift-Option-⌘-R is supposed to install the closest version that shipped with your Mac which would be Lion. But Lion is most likely not available. But it sounds like you need to install ML first then upgrade.

Reply

Answer 2

SlevinFF Author

Level 1

8 points

May 12, 2020 5:09 AM in response to dialabrain

I thought it was the same but I just tried it and it allowed me to format the SSD in extended mac os. But from this mode it only makes me install mountain lion not Catalina. So I got out of this, I went into normal recovery and tried again to install Catalina from the SD but the result is the same, same error of before so the format of the SSD maybe isn’t the problem. I have to install Mountain Lion in the Internet recovery mode (if It works) and after try to install normally Catalina? It is the only way? It’s very strange :/

Reply