2009 MacBook can't see bootable USB

[SkyBell]

Yesterday, I swapped out the original HDD in my Late 2009 MacBook with an SSD, and silly 'ol me forgot that Macs that old don't have the internet recovery option to reinstall the OS. So I downloaded Sierra from the App Store, and proceeded to make a bootable USB drive of it on my iMac. The problem is, when I hold the Option key to start the boot manager on the MacBook, all that happens is the cursor appears - and nothing else. No window to select the drive or anything. Despite having done a lot of reinstalls on many different machines over the years, this the first time I've ever tried to do so using this process of a bootable USB drive, so I'm not sure the fault lies with the machine, the drive, or me. I followed all the steps that Apple outlines on their website but I've erased the drive and gone through these steps again twice now and still end up with nothing but a cursor on the MacBook upon boot. Anyone know what could be going on? Thank you!

 

[MSastre]

If you still have the old drive, maybe you can boot from it using a sata/usb cable, then copy it over using Super Duper or Carbon Copy Cloner. The last OS my 2009 17" MBP supports is El Capitan, no Sierra, so that might be your problem as well. Always have a clone of your sytem drive. It will save many headaches.

 

[EugW]

Yesterday, I swapped out the original HDD in my Late 2009 MacBook with an SSD, and silly 'ol me forgot that Macs that old don't have the internet recovery option to reinstall the OS. So I downloaded Sierra from the App Store, and proceeded to make a bootable USB drive of it on my iMac. The problem is, when I hold the Option key to start the boot manager on the MacBook, all that happens is the cursor appears - and nothing else. No window to select the drive or anything. Despite having done a lot of reinstalls on many different machines over the years, this the first time I've ever tried to do so using this process of a bootable USB drive, so I'm not sure the fault lies with the machine, the drive, or me. I followed all the steps that Apple outlines on their website but I've erased the drive and gone through these steps again twice now and still end up with nothing but a cursor on the MacBook upon boot. Anyone know what could be going on? Thank you!

This seems to be a relatively common problem. Try a different drive.

I've noticed that certain USB drives just don't work for booting those old MacBooks. I have several USB drives that never work with my 2008 MacBook or 2009 MacBook Pro, but other USB drives work just fine, and work every time.

I'm assuming here though that you have formatted the drive properly.

 

[reklam]

Solved