[kwlug-disc] Installing OS on a mac with dead HD

[Cedric Puddy]

It’s a combo of the power of UEFI and basically booting off a minimal ISO over the internet.  Since the hardware is so standardized, there is no chance that they can’t work with the hard drive and network (both wired and wifi), and EUFI makes it pretty easy to put a fairly arbitrary amount of code around, so between all that, they don’t really need to leave much in the on system flash to make it go.  Once you’ve installed on the drive, it does make an effort to cache the installation files in a utility partition.

There are other neat things you can do at boot time — hold down the “T” key for “Target mode” — this turns your MAC into the worlds most expensive hard drive USB enclosure of all time (and then you can work directly with the contents of the disk from another machine, without having to open anything up).

Hold down the “Option” (or “C” key, I think they both do the same thing) and you get a boot loader menu, so you can boot alternate OS partitions, off a USB stick, force a logged boot (so it shows you the raw kernel scroll, like Linux can easily do).

If the machine is behaving badly (fans not running right, hardware not starting right, etc) there are combos for resetting BIOS/Hardware controllers too.  (Had a thinkpad the other day where the onboard mini-BMC crapped out and the system wouldn’t power on, and we had to find a micro hold and extra fine paper clip to reset it.  That seemed less nice.)

Overall, I’ve been pretty impressed over the years with what they thought to include at that level of the system.

  All the Best,
  -Cedric

[CCj] [Cedric Puddy, President, CCj/Clearline Inc..  T: 519-342-4004x102]

> On Sep 25, 2017, at 5:14 PM, Bob Jonkman <bjonkman at sobac.com> wrote:
> 
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
> 
> When I saw Jonathan Poole's answer I thought "If the drive is dead,
> what recovery partition is there to recover from?"
> 
> So, how *does* this work? Do Mac computers have the entire OS
> installation media available in firmware?
> 
> - --Bob
> 
> 
>> On 2017-09-25 03:44 PM, Joe Wennechuk wrote:
>> You my sir, win the prize!!!
>> 
>> 
>> Thank you very much! I have so little experience with Mac, and
>> MacOS, but this worked perfectly!
>> 
>> 
>> Joseph Wennechuk Phone: (226) 505-4812 
>> https://www.linkedin.com/pub/joseph-wennechuk/4/b59/382
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> ________________________________ From: kwlug-disc
>> <kwlug-disc-bounces at kwlug.org> on behalf of Jonathan Poole
>> <jpoole at digitaljedi.ca> Sent: September 25, 2017 12:22 PM To: KWLUG
>> discussion Subject: Re: [kwlug-disc] Installing OS on a mac with
>> dead HD
>> 
>> 
>> Can you not just replace the drive, reboot the mac into recovery
>> mode and install from internet over wifi?
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> -----Original message-----
>>> From:Joe Wennechuk Sent: Monday, September 25 2017, 12:15 pm To:
>>> KWLUG discussion Subject: Re: [kwlug-disc] Installing OS on a mac
>>> with dead HD
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> I can burn an ISO I found online, but it is a problem with the
>>> UEFI I think.
>>> 
>>> Joseph Wennechuk
>>> 
>>> Phone: (226) 505-4812
>>> 
>>> https://www.linkedin.com/pub/joseph-wennechuk/4/b59/382
>>> <https://www.linkedin.com/pub/joseph-wennechuk/4/b59/382>
>>> 
>>> -----------
>>> 
>>> From: kwlug-disc <kwlug-disc-bounces at kwlug.org> on behalf of
>>> CrankyOldBugger <crankyoldbugger at gmail.com>
>>> 
>>> Sent: September 25, 2017 12:01 PM
>>> 
>>> To: kwlug-disc at kwlug.org
>>> 
>>> Subject: Re: [kwlug-disc] Installing OS on a mac with dead HD
>>> 
>>> Assuming that you have the mac ISO, you could look at Etcher to
>>> write the USB stick:  https://etcher.io/ <https://etcher.io/>
>>> 
>>> On Mon, 25 Sep 2017 at 11:59 Joe Wennechuk
>>> <youcanreachmehere at hotmail.com
>>> <mailto:youcanreachmehere at hotmail.com>> wrote:
>>> 
>>> Hi All,
>>> 
>>> I have looked everywhere and cant figure this out. I have a
>>> macbook pro and the HD is dead. I need to reinstall the OS on a
>>> new HD, but don't have access to another mac. Is there any way to
>>> create the os install boot disk from a linux machine?
>>> 
>>> Joseph Wennechuk
>>> 
>>> Phone: (226) 505-4812 <tel:(226)%20505-4812>
>>> 
>>> https://www.linkedin.com/pub/joseph-wennechuk/4/b59/382
>>> <https://www.linkedin.com/pub/joseph-wennechuk/4/b59/382>
>>> 
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> 
>>> kwlug-disc mailing list
>>> 
>>> kwlug-disc at kwlug.org <mailto:kwlug-disc at kwlug.org>
>>> 
>>> http://kwlug.org/mailman/listinfo/kwlug-disc_kwlug.org
>>> <http://kwlug.org/mailman/listinfo/kwlug-disc_kwlug.org>
>>> 
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> 
>>> kwlug-disc mailing list
>>> 
>>> kwlug-disc at kwlug.org
>>> 
>>> http://kwlug.org/mailman/listinfo/kwlug-disc_kwlug.org
>>> 
>>> 
>> 
>> _______________________________________________ kwlug-disc mailing
>> list kwlug-disc at kwlug.org 
>> http://kwlug.org/mailman/listinfo/kwlug-disc_kwlug.org
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> _______________________________________________ kwlug-disc mailing
>> list kwlug-disc at kwlug.org 
>> http://kwlug.org/mailman/listinfo/kwlug-disc_kwlug.org
>> 
> 
> - -- 
> Bob Jonkman <bjonkman at sobac.com>          Phone: +1-519-635-9413
> SOBAC Microcomputer Services             http://sobac.com/sobac/
> Software   ---   Office & Business Automation   ---   Consulting
> GnuPG Fngrprnt:04F7 742B 8F54 C40A E115 26C2 B912 89B0 D2CC E5EA
> 
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
> Version: GnuPG v2
> Comment: Ensure confidentiality, authenticity, non-repudiability
> 
> iEYEARECAAYFAlnJcZIACgkQuRKJsNLM5epwdQCg/F0r38b+IVzQc8LhcRVC8KH0
> HBoAnA3mPpOaRm/Crj+5EkrbFORozLNe
> =Pr28
> -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
> 
> _______________________________________________
> kwlug-disc mailing list
> kwlug-disc at kwlug.org
> http://kwlug.org/mailman/listinfo/kwlug-disc_kwlug.org
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://kwlug.org/pipermail/kwlug-disc_kwlug.org/attachments/20170925/b384a31a/attachment.htm>