OSX restore on SSD

Nevakonaza · 7 Apr 2025 at 22:01

Hey,

I'm not too familiar with Macs, However I've got an older Macbook Pro (A1278) That the Hard drive died and is no longer been detected OR spinning up.

I've swapped out the HDD for an SSD, Downloaded OSX Catalina and got Belena etcher to burn a bootable DMG..

However this doesn't seem to be working, I'm holding down the "alt" key to select the usb drive but no usb drive or the ssd is showing.
however it does show "EFI boot" but when i click on that i just get a cross in a circle (which i assume means non bootable)

i don't have another mac to do this, ONLY windows systems. :/

appreciate any help.
cheers

Rainmaker · 8 Apr 2025 at 02:27

There were a few versions/revisions of A1278, which is yours? Try powering on the device while holding down Command, Option and R at the same time. This will launch Internet based recovery on compatible models, and allow you to download and install the OS direct to the new SSD. If it's too old to support that (it was around mid-2012 out of the box for MBPs, and earlier with a firmware upgrade iirc) then you need to burn an install USB.

As you've found, Etcher won't work to directly burn the ISO. You need to use an existing macOS installation to make a USB the regular way, or you can use Etcher to burn the /Contents/SharedSupport/BaseSystem.dmg image from the 'Install macOS (version)' app to USB,. Doing that will boot from the USB into recovery mode, and download the latest macOS as if the machine did support Internet recovery. Apparently, the Transmac app for Windows also has a 15 day free trial and supports burning the install app to USB in a functional way. I've never tried it though. If you do have access to a working Mac, Open Core Legacy Patcher will also easily download and burn macOS to USB for you as a fully functional installer image. Good luck.

Nevakonaza · 8 Apr 2025 at 02:38

Hey, Thanks for the reply, Finally got it all set up!

Found a tool called "Transmac" and that literally done all the work in creating the bootable installer, Soon as i used that tool and put it in the Macbook it was able to boot into that and install fresh to the SSD.

Runs lovely too.

Although i did install 10.7 Lion as that is what apparently came with the system from the factory, Need to do more research on what is the latest that will work with this machine.

Rainmaker · 8 Apr 2025 at 02:45

Nevakonaza said:
Hey, Thanks for the reply, Finally got it all set up!

Found a tool called "Transmac" and that literally done all the work in creating the bootable installer, Soon as i used that tool and put it in the Macbook it was able to boot into that and install fresh to the SSD.

Runs lovely too. Although i did install 10.7 Lion as that is what apparently came with the system from the factory, Need to do more research on what is the latest that will work with this machine.

Yeah I mentioned Transmac in my reply. You didn't say which model year it is? Definitely upgrade to the latest possible. Whatever the model year, you're going to want to make friends with Open Core Legacy Patcher and install the latest supported version for your particular Mac. Lion is way (way) out of security updates from Apple. They tend to only support the latest version and backport severe security fixes to two versions back. At the moment, that means to macOS 13 Ventura.

Nevakonaza · 8 Apr 2025 at 03:14

Rainmaker said:
Yeah I mentioned Transmac in my reply. You didn't say which model year it is? Definitely upgrade to the latest possible. Whatever the model year, you're going to want to make friends with Open Core Legacy Patcher and install the latest supported version for your particular Mac. Lion is way (way) out of security updates from Apple. They tend to only support the latest version and backport severe security fixes to two versions back. At the moment, that means to macOS 13 Ventura.

Yeah I didn't expect anyone to reply as quick so I'd already bagan using transmac before I checked on the forum , appreciate the help heaps though!
It's a rather old one core 2 duo ,2gb ram 1600mhz..
Surprisingly it's very snappy system, I plan to replace the ram with 4gb and of course already upgraded to the SSD.

il give open core legacy patcher a look into.