OS 10.11 wont' open on external drive

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Level 1

22 points

OS 10.11 wont' open on external drive

I want to try out El Capitan on my external drive before upgrading on my Macbook Pro running Mavericks but when I try to do that I get a message that says "OS 10 can't be installed on this disk". I've already tried two different drives with the same result. (LaCie Rugged & LaCie Rikiki) Both have lots of free memory. Running Mavericks on the Macbook Pro and the external drives. I'm able to start up the Mac Pro from both of the external drives. Thanks for any help.

Mac Pro

Posted on Sep 11, 2020 9:59 PM

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Answer 1

Eau Rouge

Level 8

42,656 points

Sep 11, 2020 10:21 PM in response to mitchbog

Did you download the InstallMacOSX.dmg.

Did you open that to get the InstallMacOSX.pkg.

Did you open that to get the installation window,

Did you read the text in the installation window.

Did you know this does not install El Capitan.

Did you know that when it asks you to choose a disk to install to

you need to choose the internal disk on your mac, what is happening

here is that this installation window is going to create the Install OS X El Capitan.app

in your Applications folder.

You now use the Install OS X El Capitan.app to install El Capitan.

Double-click on Install OS X El Capitan.app to start the actual installation.

Follow the prompts, at one point you will be asked where you want to install

El Capitan, this is where you select one of your external disks to install El Capitan to.

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Answer 2

mitchbog Author

Level 1

22 points

Sep 12, 2020 8:40 PM in response to Eau Rouge

Yes, I knew about nearly all of the points you listed EXCEPT for the fact that I thought choosing a drive in the installation window would install the OS. Didn't realize the installation window needed to create the app which would then start the actual installation. Thanks very much for your help with this. It's greatly appreciated.

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OS 10.11 wont' open on external drive

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