Unable to download El Capitan to create bootable USB drive

I have a mid 2009 MacBook Pro, and recently something occurred to the hard drive to the point that it will not boot (it gets stuck about 1/3 of the way through the progress bar). I have booted in to Disk Utility and attempted to repair the drive, but I get a message that says it cannot be repaired. I have a separate iMac running Sierra, and so I created a bootable USB drive with High Sierra, and also got a new hard drive. After multiple attempts and failures to install High Sierra (I keep getting the prohibitory symbol), I did more research and discovered that my vintage of MBP does not support Sierra/High Sierra (only mid 2010 models). I attempted to download the El Capitan installer on my iMac from the App Store, but it won't download there because it's running a newer copy (Sierra). Since I can't even get to my MBP to download it, how do I get a copy of the El Capitan installer so I can create a bootable USB drive?

iMac (27-inch, Late 2012), Mac OS X (10.0.x)

Posted on Mar 16, 2018 10:48 PM

Posted on Mar 16, 2018 11:37 PM

Before downloading ElCapitan to the old 2009 MacBook Pro, you first need to replace its defective hard drive with a functioning one. It will need to be formatted to a GUID partition with HFS+. The original software that came with the 2009 MacBook Pro could help you with this. Once 'Apple ready' install Mac OSX 10.6 software from the DVD onto the new hard drive. Once 10.6 is installed, log into the App Store and then in your 'purchases' you should have available the El Capitan that you previously installed, and be able to again reinstall it, and also make a new bootable USB if you want.

So the first thing is, you need to get a functioning HD sorted in your MacBook Pro.

View in context

Unable to download El Capitan to create bootable USB drive

Similar questions