Mountain Lion Won't Install on hard drive

I am trying to install Mountain Lion on top of Lion on my startup/main sys hard drive.  It says it can't install becuase the drive is not formatted as Mac OS extended with Journaling, use disk utility to turn on journaling or reformat the drive.  When I go to Disk Utility, that option is not available, it is greyed out?  I don't want to reformat the drive and loose everything?  What can I do?

spritzdog wrote:
When I go to Disk Utility, that option is not available, it is greyed out?
Did you select the partition (indented, under the main line for the drive)?
The sample is on an external, but should be the same on your internal.  If not, please either post a screenshot of yours, or note what's different.
I don't want to reformat the drive and loose everything?  What can I do?
Does that mean you don't have backups?   If not, that's risky.  Hard drives fail, things go wrong, people delete things in error. 

Similar Messages

  • Mountain Lion won't install on 10.7.4. Suggestion from Apple is to completely erase harddisk and install Leopard Snow Leopard Mountain Lion. Is there no other way to install Mountain Lion

    Mountain Lion won't install on 10.7.4. Suggestion from Apple is to completely erase the harddisk and install Leopard > Snow Leopard > Mountain Lion.
    Is there no other way to install Mountain Lion?

    I tried and failed for several hours to install Mountain Lion, and was repeatedly getting the "Recovery System" cannot be created error.  I tried all the tricks: resizing the drive partition, booting from an external boot drive, all to no avail.  After reading other users struggling with the same issue, I had determined it to be a boot camp drive error.  However, I didn't want to have to erase and begin anew when I came upon a possible solution.  I had long ago renamed my boot camp drive with a "." (".windows" for me) in order to avoid having the partition show up on my desktop.  So, I boot into windows and renamed the c: drive without the "." ("windows"), and reboot into os x.  The install then went off without a hitch.  I hope this will be helpful for others struggling with this issue that may have renamed their boot camp drives in a similar manner.

  • HT204347 Mountain Lion won't install on my laptop. I'm trying a fresh install

    Mountain Lion won't install on my laptop. I'm trying a fresh install

    Which OS X is currently installed?
    Make sure your Mac meets Mountain Lion requirements > System requirements for OS X Mountain Lion

  • Mountain Lion refuses to install on Hard disk because it is used for Time Backups. I have mounted a different disk for tame backups and still, I cannot install the OSX. What do I do?

    I donwloaded the Mountain Lion OSX and it would not install because it said that the hard disk is used for Time Backups. I then mounted a separate Hard Disk and started running the time backups on it.
    Still, the Mountain Lion would not install on the main hard disk.
    How do I convince it that the haerd disk is no longer used for time backups?

    Read through this: https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-4055

  • Mountain lion won't install after drive wipe

    Good morning.
    I recently was handed down a 2008 13" macbook (unibody)
    But my friend forgot to take all his information off the computer so he told me how to make a
    Recovery USB drive and wipe and re-install mountain lion.
    Everything goes great with the wipe and creation of the new partition so I move forward to
    Reinstall OS X I go through the EULA then it asks me for my Apple ID that the mountain license is
    Associated with and proceeds to download the os.
    It takes about 40 min and it says it will reboot.
    Problem is it hits 100% downloaded stays there a few moments
    Then restarts back to the recovery options screen. Thus not continuing
    The install.
    How do I fix this and get mountain lion back on my macbook.
    Thanks

    spritzdog wrote:
    When I go to Disk Utility, that option is not available, it is greyed out?
    Did you select the partition (indented, under the main line for the drive)?
    The sample is on an external, but should be the same on your internal.  If not, please either post a screenshot of yours, or note what's different.
    I don't want to reformat the drive and loose everything?  What can I do?
    Does that mean you don't have backups?   If not, that's risky.  Hard drives fail, things go wrong, people delete things in error. 

  • The Mountain Lion Won't Install On My 2010 MacBook Pro

    After I downloaded the Mountain Lion; it won't install because it says my hard drive is on a back up drive for the time machine. I've never used Time Machine and I only have one hard drive. I wasn't able to locate a backup file for time machine. Any suggestions on how to resolve this?

    OS X- Cannot install on a volume used by Time Machine for backups

  • Mountain Lion won't install because it says my Mac HD cannot be used to start up my computer?

    I've tried redownloading Mountain Lion but that didn't work. I've also gone into start up disc in my settings and restarted my computer with my Mac HD. It isn't partitioned. Any help here?

    Just Follow this procedure...
    1.     Go To BOOT CAMP and create a BLANK PARTITION. Say a minimum of 10 GB. You do not have to install anything on this.
    2. After you create this, go back to ML installer and now you will see 2 HD's. one will be your main HD and the second one will be the one you just created.
    3. Install the ML OS X on the main hard drive. Once installed, reboot the machine go to DISK UTILITY and delete the blank partition you had created.
    4. So, now you have your HD at its full capacity.
    Try this it should work.

  • OS Mountain Lion won't install on disk (Linux partitioned)

    I just downloaded Mountain Snow and apparently It doesn't recognize the hard drive in which to install it because it doesn't look at the partition table but just at the hard drives. I have got a mac with a triple boot (Mac OS on sda1, grub on sda 2, Ubuntu 12.04 on sda 3) and everything is coordinated by refit. How do I solve this problem without formatting my disk? Is it sufficient to put Lion on a USB stick and tr to install it from there or other procedures might be necessary?
    Thanks in advance,
    Daniele

    apparently is none of the suggested options, I tried to start it from USB stick but also from there it doesn't recognize the hard drive as compatible with installation. My guess is that the partition containing the bios for linux
    is interfering in some way. Here's my diskutil list:
       #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
       0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *750.2 GB   disk0
       1:                        EFI                         209.7 MB   disk0s1
       2:                  Apple_HFS WarioMac                630.3 GB   disk0s2
       3: 21686148-6449-6E6F-744E-656564454649               5.0 MB     disk0s3
       4:       Microsoft Basic Data                         117.0 GB   disk0s4
       5:                 Linux Swap                         2.6 GB     disk0s5

  • HT3258 Mountain lion won't install on my MBP 8.3

    Having problem upgrading to mountain lion
    Installs up to restarting
    After restart still on OSX 7.5

    Do a backup. Is the installer still in the Applications folder? It should have disappeared if the installation attempt got to the restart point.
    Try booting into the Recovery Volume using either command - R or by holding down the option key during restart. Run Disk Utility/Repair Permissions and Verify/Repair the hard drive. If everything checks out, you can then try to reinstall normally.
    I would copy the installer before installing and move the copy to a safe place. This will keep you from having to download it again if the installation isn't successful.

  • Mountain lion won't install on macbook pro 3,1

    We have a MacBook Pro  version 3,1 computer with 10.6.8 running.
    Plenty of disc left, 2 Gb RAM.
    The install process goes in a loop, from app store to www.apple.com/osx to pushing the "upgrade" button and back to the app store page.
    I'm not really a Mac kind of person, it can tell.
    I ran a hard disk utility to check and correct permissions but it didn't help.
    any thoughts out there?  I just want to run lightroom 5 and it needs 10.7 or better.
    Can I buy 10.7 someplace?
    Thanks
    Darrell

    Hello darrellsmith,
    While i currently have no solution or suggestion for your problem, i would like to mention that even though Mountain Lion technically supports your model MacBook Pro, i advise against upgrading to mountain lion. It will put significant strain on your system resources and most tasks will perform very slow. If you really do need Mountain Lion, at least upgrade your RAM to 4GB. I know that 2GB is the minimum requirements but you'll lose those 2GB by just booting up and starting Safari. Add the software you want to use on top of that and your performance will be severely impacted.
    Also, make sure you have a good backup of all your data. Upgrading an older system and skipping a major release in the process can create some issues or bring issues to light that you already had but just were not aware of.
    A possible solution could be to create a bootable installer on an external drive, instructions can be found here.
    For your system, OS X 10.6.8 would be the recommended OS and will give the smoothest performance. You will, as you've noticed, be limited to the applications you can run.

  • No Recovery - Mountain Lion won't install but Lion Recovery worked (until Mountain Lion messed it up).

    When I tried to install Mountain Lion it gave me the "this disk does not support some features, like FileVault or Recovery Mode..." message.  However, my Lion install at that point had a working Recovery Partition (I confirmed it after I got this first message - booted with it).  I also have a cloned backup so I clicked continue.  The install failed and gave the "No Recovery" message.  Then I tried to boot in Recovery Mode and a screen came up saying "Installing" and the giant X with what looked like a progress bar with diagonal blue lines moving left to right, but no "time remaining" or other info indicating it was doing anything.  I let this go on for about 10 or 15 minutes then restarted my computer.  In Disk Utility I repaired permissions and disk repair was ok. I'm not using RAID or BootCamp - just one partition (plus the Lion Recovery one.  The Mac is a newest model MacMini with an OWC SSD (I first thought the SSD might be the problem but it worked with Lion, so...)

    Just Follow this procedure...
    1.     Go To BOOT CAMP and create a BLANK PARTITION. Say a minimum of 10 GB. You do not have to install anything on this.
    2. After you create this, go back to ML installer and now you will see 2 HD's. one will be your main HD and the second one will be the one you just created.
    3. Install the ML OS X on the main hard drive. Once installed, reboot the machine go to DISK UTILITY and delete the blank partition you had created.
    4. So, now you have your HD at its full capacity.
    Try this it should work.

  • OS X won't install to hard drive after downloading

    I may be having hard drive problems and may need a new drive but I wanted to try everything before that. I could not boot up this morning.  Just the grey scene and spinning wheel. I called tech support and was instructed to go through a disk repair and repair permissions. The disk repair itself took almost 5 hours. During the scheduled call back with tech support, I was instructed to download and install Mountain Lion, which took about 4 hours. This is where I'm having problems.....the Install OS X screen keeps showing "installing OS X on the disk "Macintosh HD". Time remaining 34 minutes. The barbershop sign shows no movement and the time remaining stays on 34 minutes. Is this indicative of a failed hard drive in need of replacement?

    Hello
    I have this powerbook g4 running Ubuntu Linux (or it was). Now I wanted to try the OS X so I checked if the firmware had to be updated (on apple.com), and if the current OS X would install on my powerbook. It seemed all was good to go..
    But when I try to boot the install cd/dvd it loads the apple logo and the flashlooking 'loading-circle' just to make me feel like success , THEN it either crashed with a distorted apple logo or gives me this 'Corrupt-folder/Kernel panic' logo.
    I tried almost everything to fix it, I've read half the internet info on this topic - all with no luck!
    Remember I'm new to mac so I might have overlooked something, somewhere..
    Can anyone please help me out - I want to have a look at the OS X
    powerbook g4   Other OS   Linux

  • Mountain Lion wont download to my hard drive

    Whenever I open up the "Install OS X Mountain Lion" and after I press continue, and agree to the terms and conditions, it tells me OS X cannot be installed on my hard drive and when I quit and start the Installer, and I go through everything I just did, it now shows me a picture of the hard drive image faded, so when I click on it, it says "The disk is used for Time Machine backups" but it wont let me install OS X Mountain Lion still and I checked and I am not using my hard drive for Time Machine backups as well as not using Time Machine at all.

    hello
    i download OS X Mountain Lion with my iMac but after 3 hours not complate and now almost 2 hours is waiting
    only icon is waiting now and not coming any message
    can you help me what i doing?
    thanks

  • Mountain Lion won't install on mid-2010 iMac with Snow Leopard

    Using the same Apple ID I used to purchase Mountain Lion on my Mac Pro, I signed into the Mac App Store on my iMac and downloaded Mountain Lion with no issues.  The iMac is running 10.6.8.
    When I launch the ML installer and accept the terms, the install screen appears but the Install button is greyed out as is the icon for my hard disk, Macintosh HD.  Below the OS X Mountain Lion banner it says "OS X cannot be installed on "Macintosh HD".
    Snow Leopard was installed on this machine as part of a family pack and I still have the DVD.  Nothing shady going on license-wise, is I guess what I'm saying here.
    Anyway, no reason is given and no options are offered other than the Back button at that point.  And I can't seem to come up with anyone having a similar issue in all my "research".  So any help or insight would be appreciated.
    Thanks,
    Doug

    I recommend backing up your system, and before going into the install, checking disk utility > verify disk > macintosh hd partition > to make sure the partition is okay.
    If there is anything wrong with it, you will know here. Sounds like the disk may be locked or there is an issue w/the partition "macintosh hd"
    also, maybe the partition was created incorrectly... check to see if the partion is MAC OS EXTENDED JOURNALED and not case-sensetive

  • Macbook Pro Late 2011, Bought 6 months ago.. Mountain Lion won't install

    I recently bought a new macbook pro 6 months ago, and with lion, I have tryed to download mountain lion but it does not work, it says this disk cannot be used to start up your computer, i tried clcking on the recovery partion as well but that also does not work, I would be very gratefull if you can help, if you need any extra information just ask!

    Install from USB stick (min 8 GB) ...
    If you do not know how to do this see the link below ...
    http://osxdaily.com/2012/02/17/make-bootable-os-x-10-8-mountain-lion-usb-install -drive/
    Second ... Boot from USB drive (select the alt key on restart)
    3rd ... Before installing the system - do disk format
    Only the partition (GUID) allows the installation of the system.
    Take a look at the following picture ...
    Regards Adam

Maybe you are looking for

  • CUCM Upgrade 8.0 to 8.6 Question

    Hi guys, i have a 8.0.2 CUCM and i want to go to 8.6 I was wondering if rebooting the server after the installion of "ciscocm.refresh_upgrade_v1.0.cop.sgn"  can compromise the update because i did install it a week ago and meanwhile the servers had a

  • How can I recombine songs from different artists on 1 album to show as 1 album on itunes?

    How can I have all of the songs on 1 album listed together?  I have several CDs on which multiple artists participated.  On the iPhone & in iTunes it lists the same album several times, each with different combinations of artists.  It is 1 album! For

  • Error in a/c determination

    hi friends, Iam having an error in account detmination while posting invoice to accounts.the error is of jn6 for cst. I have checked in vkoa and i have maintained the cst charges in ftxp also. please tell that if i have to say cst as 3%,4%  against f

  • Java.lang.OutOfMemoryError Exeption while Mapping

    HI Team, I am using PI 7.1 and while mapping IDOC to File my message mapping is getting this error "java.lang.OutOfMemoryError" Some time the Mapping is getting Opened, but some times it is giving this error. #45 18:55:56 [AWT-EventQueue-2] FINE Auto

  • Issues with Windows Security

    Recently one of our networks tech here at work changed permissions on our development server so that you needed a user account in order to view any folders/sites from a browser. I can understand the security reasoning behind this but now my Dreamweav