Up Grade To El Capitan

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Level 1

12 points

Up Grade To El Capitan

I have a Early 2009 i Mac 24" running Mavricks. I was trying to up grade to El Capitan, but the computer always gets stuck at 75%. I was ready to put a new hard drive anyway, not ready to buy a new i Mac, and wanted to get one more year out of it. Thinking it is a hard drive, I went ahead and installed a new 1 T Sata drive 7200 rpm.

I can't get the new drive to boot, all I get is a flashing folder with a question mark in it. I formatted the drive and installed it into the case, thinking it will boot up into disc utility and I can install the OS X El Capitan installer, USB.

I am thinking that the data cable is bad. I went ahead and used a USB device to read the old hard drive, it is visible on my laptop, so the hard drive is not bad.

Is the computer toast and buy a new computer? Or how do I get this new hard drive to work in my i Mac?

Thx,

Mark

Posted on Apr 1, 2018 9:14 AM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

Eric Root

Level 10

685,251 points

Apr 2, 2018 9:52 AM in response to MazDuc

On your laptop, sign into the App Store, and download the installer from your Purchases page. Quit the installer.

You can make a bootable USB stick to install using these free programs which will do all the work for you. Boot the iMac off of the USB drive and install the OS.

Bootable USB Flash Drive – Diskmaker X Disk Creator oruse Apple’s method Create a bootable installer for OS

El Capitan

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Answer 2

Eric Root

Level 10

685,251 points

Apr 1, 2018 10:00 AM in response to MazDuc

Clarification questions - do you have a bootable USB installer that you can try an erase/reformat and install again? If you have an enclosure for your old hard drive, can you boot from that? If you put the old drive back into the computer, can you boot from that? I would try replacing the hard drive cable before getting a new computer.

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Answer 3

MazDuc Author

Level 1

12 points

Apr 1, 2018 2:26 PM in response to Eric Root

I only have formatted the drive, and then installed it into the i Mac. I guess it needs a booting program to know the hardrive is detected.

I don't have the original install disc, that came with the computer. I do have a USB to Sata/IDE, that is how I know the old drive is working.

How do I boot that old drive, using my laptop? I am not very good at the hardware side of Macs.

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Answer 4

Tesserax

Level 10

158,166 points

Apr 1, 2018 9:53 AM in response to MazDuc

Did you clone your existing iMac's system drive to the new drive BEFORE you installed it? If so, did you make sure that it can boot up your iMac to the OS X Desktop?

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Up Grade To El Capitan

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