something to the effect of no valid packages found or something?). I think i was already a little annoyed with the process because i had a previous version of the 'Install OS X El Capitan.app' on my startup drive (probably from when the computer itself was originally upgraded to El Capitan) that i was attempting to use but after going through the install process several times, each one of which took about 30 minutes, before getting an error message that the software could not be installed (i forget the exact error message itself. Very strange Apple!!īut thank you HWTech for the speedy reply and the helpful links -) Even the dialog window when I tried to install the downloaded installer said, 'Select the disk where you want to install the OS X software.' The disk I wanted to install it on was the 'Untitled' disk, but the dialog should have said 'Select the disk where you would like to launch the installer software that will in turn install the OS X software (Note: the location to install the installer software that will install OS X cannot be on the target disk for the OS X software itself)'. So naturally, when I wanted to install it on a spare drive, I attempted to install it there but it appears that the installer installer cannot be deployed that way, hence the grayed out drive when trying to specify where to install the software. So again the instructions are VERY misleading. similarly, step 5 is titled 'Install the Mac OS Installer' when you are actually installing the installer that then installs the Mac OS X installer. the problem is, even in the instructions, the title of step 4 is 'Download OS X El Capitan' when you are actually downloading something 2 degrees of separation from OS X El Capitan, namely, the installer that installs the installer for OS X El Capitan. I was also following the instructions found at the second link.

Thank you for your response!! those are the links from which I had downloaded the installer.

Install os x el capitan to new drive