What version of macOS for older macs

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Haole Boy

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Aloha everyone. Hoping that one of the Mac guru's here can assist. I only occasionally work on a Mac, so forgive me is this is painfully obvious to you folks.

I have an external drive with macOS that I boot from when working on a Mac. I have Carbon Copy Cloner and Disk Warrior on this disk and use these to backup the customer's mac and also check the hard disk. A few months ago, I updated the version of macOS on this disk, and now it won't work with older macs.

So, I want to make another bootable external drive (a USB stick in this case) to work with older macs. What version of macOS (or OS X) would you recommend for this?

I currently have a 2011 iMac on my bench, and El Capitan is as current as it can go. So this seems like a reasonable choice. Comments?

Mahalo,

Harry Z
 
I keep three bootable OSX/macOSes lying around - Snow Leopard, El Capitan, and Catalina. I've yet to encounter any Intel-based Mac that won't boot at least one of them, though I haven't had to use the Snow Leopard one for a couple of years as El Capitan can handle pretty much anything from late 2007 to 2015 and Catalina is good for anything from 2015 onwards (so far).

Short answer: Yes, El Capitan would be my choice too.
 
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iMac 2011 goes to high Sierra not El Capitan, as far as live os I would suggest El Capitan, high Sierra and catalina because all the Macs that support earlier versions os Mac OS will support the versions I suggested
 
If a Mac doesn't support at least High Sierra then I recommend a trade in. There are some exceptions. I got in a 15" MacBook Pro 2011 today with El Capitan. Although it can support up to High Sierra, my client uses Photoshop CS5, which isn't compatible with High Sierra. Because of this, I'm just upgrading them to a SSD and doing an exact copy of the drive. Easy $500.

Still, a 2011 is considered EOL. Heck, anything older than a 2015 is EOL, though a 2013 can still handle Big Sur. I upgraded my 2012 Mac Mini server a few weeks (months?) ago...I'm losing track of time here because of the Coronavirus. It was pretty long in the tooth and I'm glad to be on a 2018 Mac now.
 
Mahalo for all the answers. Much appreciated. I'm trying to install El Capitan to a USB stick, but my Hi Sierra system says it's too old and won't do it. I downloaded Diskmaker 6, which is supposed to be able to install El Capitan, but it fails, and the help page says to use a more recent version, which supposedly doesn't support El Capitan. Ugh.

All I have available is my High Sierra system. What do you recommend I use to create a bootable El Capitan USB stick?

Mahalo,

Harry Z
 
Haole Boy said:
Mahalo for all the answers. Much appreciated. I'm trying to install El Capitan to a USB stick, but my Hi Sierra system says it's too old and won't do it. I downloaded Diskmaker 6, which is supposed to be able to install El Capitan, but it fails, and the help page says to use a more recent version, which supposedly doesn't support El Capitan. Ugh.

All I have available is my High Sierra system. What do you recommend I use to create a bootable El Capitan USB stick?

Mahalo,

Harry Z
Click to expand...

Install El Capitan to a USB stick? Were you trying to run the installer image pointing to the USB stick as a destination volume from within the High Sierra environment? Generally that doesn't work. But you can certainly build an installer on a USB stick with in the High Sierra enbvironment.


https://apple.stackexchange.com/que...ler-on-a-catalina-or-post-el-capitan-installe
 
I am NOT trying to create an installer disk. I am trying to create a bootable, running system on a USB stick from which I can then run my backup and diagnostic tools. Yes, it will be slow, but this is what I want.
 
Haole Boy said:
I am NOT trying to create an installer disk. I am trying to create a bootable, running system on a USB stick from which I can then run my backup and diagnostic tools. Yes, it will be slow, but this is what I want.
Click to expand...

You still need the installer disk to do this if you don't have your own Mac. You'll need a second USB HD or stick. After you create the installer attach the second drive then boot from the installer, powering up with command + option. Then run the installer and point it to the second drive to install. Then you'll have a bootable macos which you can add apps to etc.
 
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Or there's the "quick and dirty and you didn't hear this from me" approach.

Borrow a Mac with the right operating system, clone it to your external drive, then boot your machine from the external drive and depersonalize it by setting up a new user account (and removing the original one) and uninstalling all the software that doesn't belong to you. Be very careful not to do this on the original machine as wiping out someone else's computer will get you talked about.

It's not pretty, but it'll work.
 
Haole Boy said:
Mahalo for all the answers. Much appreciated. I'm trying to install El Capitan to a USB stick, but my Hi Sierra system says it's too old and won't do it. I downloaded Diskmaker 6, which is supposed to be able to install El Capitan, but it fails, and the help page says to use a more recent version, which supposedly doesn't support El Capitan. Ugh.

All I have available is my High Sierra system. What do you recommend I use to create a bootable El Capitan USB stick?

Mahalo,

Harry Z
Click to expand...
why not install high sierra as it is still full supported. El capitan is very old
 
pcpete said:
why not install high sierra as it is still full supported. El capitan is very old
Click to expand...

My client base is residential, and they tend to keep their machines for a much longer time than businesses do. Had a 2008 iMac in here last week. El Capitan is as recent as it could get, so I decided to create an El Capitan boot drive in case I get some more ancient macs.

Harry Z
 
Haole Boy said:
My client base is residential, and they tend to keep their machines for a much longer time than businesses do. Had a 2008 iMac in here last week. El Capitan is as recent as it could get, so I decided to create an El Capitan boot drive in case I get some more ancient macs.

Harry Z
Click to expand...

Using a computer with El Capitan is almost as bad as using a computer with Windows XP. I hope you're warning your clients about not doing anything important or sensitive on their computers (banking, etc.).
 
sapphirescales said:
Using a computer with El Capitan is almost as bad as using a computer with Windows XP. I hope you're warning your clients about not doing anything important or sensitive on their computers (banking, etc.).
Click to expand...

I must be a bad salesman. I can't even get some of them to sign up for cloud backup - and this is after they lost everything due to a failed hard drive or encrypting ransomeware. Sheesh.. $6.00 / month isn't going to keep food off the table....
 
Haole Boy said:
I must be a bad salesman. I can't even get some of them to sign up for cloud backup - and this is after they lost everything due to a failed hard drive or encrypting ransomeware. Sheesh.. $6.00 / month isn't going to keep food off the table....
Click to expand...
What cloud backup do you sell that's only $6/month? I wouldn't necessarily blame yourself and your sales skills, but my clients would kill to be paying that.
 
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