How can I restore my mid 2012 Mac Pro to factory settings while it's running Sierra?

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Level 1

5 points

How can I restore my mid 2012 Mac Pro to factory settings while it's running Sierra?

I purchased my mid 2012 Mac Pro (specs below) last year from a college friend and am finally working more with it and would like to restore to factory settings to get the rest of her software and files off of the machine once and for all. It is currently running Sierra (10.12.3).

It is my understanding that the mid 2012 Mac Pro I have shipped with OS 10.7.3 (Lion) and was not shipped with a recovery disc (when she sold it to me the system had been updated from the original OS). I read in a solution to a previous postthat my particular model is not compatible with Internet Recovery and thus a recovery disc must be made on an external drive. I downloaded the Recovery Disc Assistant and received an error that I cannot make a recovery disc because it cannot find a Lion recovery available on the machine (which would make sense given it's running Sierra). I do own a mid 2014 MacbookPro with Retina Display that is also running Sierra (10.12.3) but some of the posts I've read indicate that you must create the recovery disc from the same machine that you intend to restore otherwise it could cause it to function improperly.

Does this mean that Internet Recovery will work since I'm already running a new version of the OS? Or do I still need a Lion recovery disc to do a restore and wipe the hard drive? (And, if so, how can I obtain this?)

Specs:

Mac Pro (Mid2012)

Processor 3.2 Ghz Quad-Core Intel Xeon

Memory 6 GB 1066 MHz DDR3

Storage 1TB

Mac Pro, macOS Sierra (10.12.3), Mid 2012 Mac Pro

Posted on Mar 3, 2017 10:27 AM

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Answer 1

K Shaffer

Level 8

36,088 points

Mar 4, 2017 11:56 AM in response to thisisSDK

Did you try the macOS Recovery option to attempt to download or run

the Utilities from Apple Server, the Internet Recovery may attempt a

default system installation. This would be recommended if you should

need to sell or give away a computer, to de-personalize & reinstall OS.

Option-Command-R

Start up from the recovery system over the Internet (macOS Internet Recovery*).

•About macOS Recovery - Apple Support

Good luck & happy trails! 🙂

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Answer 2

Mar 4, 2017 2:15 PM in response to thisisSDK

'Recovery Disk Assistant' is intended for copying the on-Disk Recovery partition onto another drive. It is not the tool that you seek.

None of the Mac Pro silver tower models have the built-in firmware support for Internet Recovery, so that is also a dead-end.

What you should do is select a version of Mac OS, such as Sierra, download it using YOUR Apple-ID, cancel the Installation as it begins to Install, and make an 8GB bootable USB-stick Installer/Utilities drive from the Install image using DiskMakerX. Purchased version of MacOS (even purchased for $0) contain "drivers for every appropriate Mac", but will be forever tagged with YOUR Apple-ID as the Purchaser.

http://diskmakerx.com/

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