Creating USB stick / recovery installing OSX 10.9.3 fails

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Level 1

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Creating USB stick / recovery installing OSX 10.9.3 fails

Hi all,

I'm trying to create a USB stick installer / install OSX from 10.9 recovery partition and it isn't working.

I downloaded the image from App store 4 times , and every time I got an error that the file isn't completely downloaded or it is corrupt when using Diskmaker X or trying the command line option that floats around for it.

After that I tried booting to recovery and chose reinstall OSX. It starts downloading for maybe 20 minutes and instead of rebooting, it jumps back to the OSX additional programs menu. Seems like it's doing the same thing as the USB install.

Is the DMG file in the app store corrupt somehow? Has someone managed to do a clean install of 10.9.3 , or create a USB drive?

I seriously don't think that the download could have failed 4 times in a row when doing it with App Store and 3 times in a row while trying to do it in recovery, and I did some hard drive tests, and the 60GB SSD drive I have on the Mac is OK.

MacBook Pro, OS X Mavericks (10.9.3)

Posted on May 18, 2014 11:22 AM

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Answer 1

Drew Reece

Level 6

10,684 points

May 18, 2014 12:36 PM in response to Sotkelo

Store downloads depend on your connection - are you on wifi? Wired is more stable & should be quickest. Is the machine sleeing before completion?

What is the command you ran to make the installer (there is a lot floating around on the internet). I have had sucess with 10.9.2 installers, not tried 10.9.3 yet.

The other thing to consider is the USB stick, do you have another one to try? Some sticks just don't want to boot OS's for reasons unknown to me.

The App store should verify the download, as far as I can see there isn't an Apple SHA1 listed for the 10.9.3 installer, I'm not sure you can verify it is intact. You could probably compare all the copies, but ti still doesn't mean they are 100% correct (I can't see how they would all time out or fail creating the same size data though).

In Terminal…

openssl sha1 /path/to/the/installer

…will output a checksum.

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Answer 2

Sotkelo Author

Level 1

0 points

May 18, 2014 1:29 PM in response to Drew Reece

Nope, the machine isn't sleeping during the download. I'm on 100mbit fiber, so the download only takes 15 minutes. I've tried it wired. The reason why I don't think the thumbdrive is the problem is because the same exact scenario happened while trying to install it from Recovery partition using reinstall OS X - that would have nothing to do with the thumb drive, either the download is constantly failing, which I don't think since I've tried it 7 times now, or the image itself is corrupt somehow, which sounds really bizarre.

ATM I'm trying to create the thumbdrive with a 10.9.2 image I found online, maybe that'll work better.

I tried by using a guide similar to this : http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/clean-install-mavericks/

So the creation command would be:

sudo /Applications/Install\ OS\ X\ Mavericks.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/Untitled --applicationpath /Applications/Install\ OS\ X\ Mavericks.app --nointeraction

That formatted the drive, spent around 20 minutes copying data and then gave an error message at the end, which I don't remember.

When I tried using diskmaker X, it formatted the thumbdrive but before it started copying anything, it said that the image I'm trying to use is corrupt and refused to do anything.

Edit: oh and I can't check the checksum stuff anymore, since I already wiped the HDD partition while trying to install from recovery menu. So all the data from the drive is gone, now I just need to get OSX back on it 😝

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Answer 3

Sotkelo Author

Level 1

0 points

May 18, 2014 1:57 PM in response to Sotkelo

Quick update to this - I managed to get 10.9.2 installing just fine from the same thumbdrive I tried earlier. So really looks like the DMG file in the App store was borked somehow. I guess they have to use various mirrors around the world, so maybe one mirror is corrupt, who knows. I'll just have to tell the dude who bought the Macbook from me (reason why I'm wiping it) to install 10.9.3 when he starts using it.

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