Tips: Installing older versions of macOS on brand new drive

Something I hadn't really come across until this evening - after a hard drive swap, had to re-install the latest (supported on that hardware) version of macOS, in this case good old (really old!) OS X 10.11.x (aka El Capitan). Now macOS ordinarily allows you to run an internet-based install of the OS direct from the recovery partition, which makes clean install process a breeze. Unfortunately being this was a completely fresh drive....no recovery partition or ability to reach an internet recovery install.

Apple happily lets you download all the previous versions of macOS in full - from which (theoretically) one can create a USB installer....happy days right?!

Well yes, but no, but yes, but no....the fly in the ointment here is that you can't create a USB installer from a newer machine that's running a later version of OS X / macOS than what you want make a USB installer for. Doh! It simply does not want to let you do it. As noted in this Apple Community support article.

This is the workaround linked from that article. Glad to say it worked perfectly and got me out of a bit of a pickle.

Edited by Pheasant (Sun 29-May-22 01:54:55)