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I am replacing the hard drive on my 2011 iMac as it has an issue during the latest system upgrade. Do I put a version of the old operating system into new hard drive before installing into Mac? I have an external hard drive as back up by the way. Any help would be awesome. Thanks
Here is how I normally do it First have a thumb drive with the OS X installer handyPut your old hard drive into an external enclosure (looks like you’ve done that already)Put the new hard drive in the computerStart install from thumb drive into new hard driveBoot from thumb driveRun disk utility, partition new driveWhile installing plug in the old hard drive via USBAt the end of install, it will ask you if you want to migrate your old data. Use the data migration wizard to copy your old apps/docs/other files to the new hard drive. Done!
Hi @dwight13 what issues do you encounter during the system updates? are you installing high sierra? if you had backup your important files, i would recommended you to perform clean install, to minimise possible conflicts from current apps, etc. before you continue, do a hardware test first on your mac desktop, get ready the installer on the usb. if there is no issues from the hardware test and proceed to install the new hdd. use the created os usb installer to bootup. create the necessary partition on the new hdd, mac os extended - journaled. and start installing.
