Download El Capitan Issue

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Level 1

52 points

Download El Capitan Issue

I am trying to download El Capitan to an external drive and keep getting this:

OS X can’t be installed on “Macintosh HD” because the version of macOS is too new.

Wondering how I can get around this? I am trying to use El Capitan with some of my dated apps which High Sierra doesn't work with. I have partitioned the external drive but not sure how to get the download to work with the external hard drive. Any ideas would be appreciated.

iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, Late 2014), macOS High Sierra (10.13), MacPro Dual-Core, 2.66 GHz

Posted on Dec 12, 2017 12:34 PM

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Answer 1

Best reply

Eau Rouge

Level 8

42,554 points

Dec 13, 2017 10:58 AM in response to marti153

You will get that message when trying to install an older OS whilst booted from a newer OS.

So make a bootable USB for El Capitan, see these instructions from Apple and make sure you use the commands for El Capitan, How to create a bootable installer for macOS - Apple Support or use this, http://diskmakerx.com/

Then boot from the USB using System Preferences> Startup Disk and then install El Capitan on your external drive.

Beforehand make sure your external drive is formatted as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) on a GUID Partition Map Scheme.

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Answer 2

Eau Rouge

Level 8

42,554 points

Dec 12, 2017 1:20 PM in response to marti153

If you had at a previous time downloaded El C it will be available for download in your Purchases section of the App Store.

As you have High Sierra you will be denied the download of El C. If you have a mac that can download El C or have a friends mac that can you can then transfer the Install Mac OS X El Capitan.app from the Applications folder to the mac you want to apply it to.

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Answer 3

marti153 Author

Level 1

52 points

Dec 12, 2017 4:24 PM in response to Eau Rouge

Thank you for your reply. I did download El Capitan from the App Store as suggested by you. However, it now tells me that "This copy of the "Install OS X" application is too old to be opened on this version of OS X."

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