Apple also offers Shift-Command-Option-R, which installs the version of OS X or macOS with which your computer shipped, or the next oldest compatible system still available for download.
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While Command-R at startup always installs whatever the most recent version you installed on your Mac, holding down Command-Option-R brings down the very latest compatible version that can be installed.
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However, if you have normal Recovery installed and it refuses to install macOS for some reason, you can manually invoke Internet Recovery. There, the Mac reaches out over a Wi-Fi or ethernet connection to download the relatively modest Recovery software, which then bootstraps the download of the full macOS installer.Īpple says Internet-based Recovery should happen automatically on supported models, and you should see a spinning globe when that mode is invoked while the download occurs. However, there’s yet another option: macOS Recovery over the Internet, which requires either a Mac model released in 2012 or later, or most 20 models with a firmware upgrade applied. When complete, it installs it and reboots, and places the installer in the Applications folder. (Apple doesn’t document that, and I haven’t had to test that for years.)įailing finding it, Recovery downloads the currently installed version of macOS (or OS X), which is about 5GB. In that mode, when you choose to reinstall without erasing the drive, my recollection is that Recovery looks for the current OS system installer on your startup disk in the Applications folder, and uses that.
![mac softraid recovery volume sierra mac softraid recovery volume sierra](https://www.storagenewsletter.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/OWC-1709_SoftRAID-Disk-Predicted-to-Fail-Based-on-SMART-Data-300x143.jpg)
That allows you to run Disk Utility, reinstall or wipe and install the system, access Terminal for command-line functions, and so on. Normally, you can start up a Mac while holding down Command-R to boot into what Apple now calls macOS Recovery. But if you can’t get access to another Mac or the necessary drive, it’s still possible to use a different Recovery mode on all recent Macs, dating back to 2010.