Problems when I want to refresh my Mavericks system by using an USB-stick with the complete installer.

Question

Problems when I want to refresh my Mavericks system by using an USB-stick with the complete installer.

I want to "refresh" my Mavericks system by a clean install and I have still an USB-stick with the complete installer.

With this USB-stick I successfully installed Mavericks already before. Now I want to repeat the installation by booting from USB-stick. But when the installation starts quite early an alert appears, says something like "… the verification failed–something is changed on the volume …" and the installation cant continued.

I archived the original "OS X Mavericks installieren.app" from app-store and I properly prepared another USB-stick again using the terminal-app referencing the original installer, but I still get this alert when I try to install with this new USB-stick.

It is necessary for me to work with Mavericks because it is the last system version on which I can run Adobe Creative Suite CS6 properly. With later OS X versions I get problems on my Mac Pro (late 2008).

I wonder what could happened with the data on my first USB-stick, because I already installed Mavericks successfully with it under same conditions and after it never touched the stick again until now. What can I do? What is the reason for this? Is there any site where I can get support or a hint to solve the problem or if necessary can I download a "fresh" installer again?

thanks and regards from Berlin

Mac Pro (Early 2008), OS X Mavericks (10.9)

Posted on Jun 10, 2016 6:13 AM

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Answer 1

Eric Root

Level 10

685,293 points

Jun 10, 2016 9:13 AM in response to flowolf-berlin

You can make a bootable USB stick to install using this free program which will do all the work for you. Try running Disk Utility/Repair Disk be fore installing.

Bootable USB Flash Drive – Diskmaker X

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Answer 2

Jun 13, 2016 8:11 AM in response to Eric Root

Thank you Eric. I already tried the Diskmaker X additional if this works better than the terminal methode, it is quite more comfortable with this program especially for users who are not so familiar with command-lines. But in my case the problem stays the same. And I tried to repair with the disk utility tool, this has not found any problem, the USB-stick seems to be ok. Anyway I run the repairing process and tried again to install Mavericks—but still same alert appears and stops the installing process.

I cannot understand why Apple do not keep downloads for older versions of OS X reachable, not all users have Macs which are able running the recent system. Does anybody know a solution for this problem?

Thank you.

PS: Meanwhile I tried out the USB-stick with Mavericks-installer of a friend of mine which he independently made that time for his Mac and it is the same problem—interesting.

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Answer 3

MichelPM

Level 10

81,541 points

Jun 13, 2016 4:31 PM in response to flowolf-berlin

You could back up your Mac (something you should be doing anyways) to an external hard drive, using a bootable cloning application like Bombich's CarbonCopyCloner or Shirt Pocket's Super Duper.

http://bombich.com/

http://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper/SuperDuperDescription.html

Then try to reinstall OS X Mavericks using your recovery partition, using the Command-R keyboard keys, to re install Mavericks.

OS X: About OS X Recovery - Apple Support

With a large enough USB stick formatted for OS X, you could create a limited size clone of your current system and OS X 10.9 Mavericks to a USB flash Drive. The flash drive would need to be reformatted for OS X extended format (journaled) with GUID partition scheme to use a USB Drive in this manner.

Also, if you version of Mavericks is not the current one on Apple's servers, this could be causing you issues too!

The last/latest version of OS X Mavericks is OS X 10.9.5.

If you are running an earlier version, this may explain some of your difficuties.

Good Luck!

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Answer 4

Eric Root

Level 10

685,293 points

Jun 13, 2016 9:48 AM in response to flowolf-berlin

Installers not working http://tidbits.com/article/16302

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Answer 5

Jun 13, 2016 4:58 PM in response to MichelPM

Thank you all very much, that was a solution for my problem. Fortunately I still had the (10.9)-recovery-partition and was able to install the Mavericks system on a 16GB-USB-thumb-drive. After it I booted from the new recovery-partition on the USB-stick and then I made a clean-install onto the final hard-drive and brought back my data from time machine backup.

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