How to install El Capitan on a brand new (no any partitions) hard drive in my old MacBook Pro Mid 2009 13" if I have a working MacBook Air M1 computer?

The hard drive in my old 2009 machine has died and I replaced it with a brand new hdd. Now I have a problem since there is no backup available and there is no recovery partition in order to enter recovery mode. I've tried to create a bootable USB on my new MacBook Air M1 but it's simply not possible since both computers have different architectures (mine is M1 while the old MacBook has Intel).


MacBook Pro

Posted on Mar 19, 2021 7:59 AM

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1 reply

Mar 19, 2021 8:31 AM in response to ipanitchkov

I take it you downloaded the InstallMacOSX.dmg from here,

How to get old versions of macOS – Apple Support When you open the InstallMacOSX.dmg you will get the InstallMacOSX.pkg,

which in turn opens an installation window, this does not install El Capitan but creates the

Install OS X El Capitan.app in your Applications folder. Unfortunately this can only be done

on macs that can actually run El Capitan. Therefore macs that came with a newer OS than

El Capitan preinstalled will refuse to make the installer app.


When you click the button on the installation window to start the conversion the mac reads

a Distribution file which contains a list of macs that are allowed to do this, your M1 mac and other

macs from late 2016 onwards are not listed in the Distribution file resulting in the refusal to complete.


However there is a workaround if you are willing to try it out.


https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/379603/how-do-i-create-el-capitan-installer-on-a-catalina-or-post-el-capitan-installe

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How to install El Capitan on a brand new (no any partitions) hard drive in my old MacBook Pro Mid 2009 13" if I have a working MacBook Air M1 computer?

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