I have a Macbook Pro A1278 with a dead hard drive. I have put a new hard drive in it and now need to figure out how to get my hands on the os. Does anyone know if it is possible to still download OS X El Capitan? If so, how?
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A1278 covers the 2008 through 2012 model years. Do you have any idea the model id, serial # or year of your Mac? – David Anderson Feb 13 '21 at 01:55
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Apple has a page How to get old versions of macOS which includes a link to download OS X El Capitan 10.11.
The next question is going to be how to make a bootable installer. Do you have another Mac available?
If so, DiskMaker X would be the place that I would start.
TJ Luoma
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I wonder if El Capitan can still be downloaded through Internet Recovery. I suppose this depends on the model year of the Mac and the firmware version. Still, might be worth a try. At least this would not require another Mac. – David Anderson Feb 13 '21 at 12:50
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True, but if it’s a clean hard drive, there will not be a Recovery partition on it. I think that’s a requirement. – TJ Luoma Feb 13 '21 at 17:11
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Internet Recovery is where the Mac boots from the internet. There does not need to be any files on any drive connected to the Mac. Ram disks are created to hold the files downloaded. Are you tell me you were unaware of any of this? – David Anderson Feb 13 '21 at 18:32