Newest MacBook Air Won't Boot after Imaging Mavericks

[nstackhouse]

We have several new MacBook Airs (Model A1466) which we are trying to image using Target Mode Imaging, using a Mavericks Base as the OS. The OS was taken from another MacBook Air also model A1466. However, the logs show no errors in the imaging process and when we try to boot the machine, it comes up with the "no access" symbol or Circle with a Slash through it.

When we boot into option mode, there is no recovery disk, just the HD that is supposed to have the image on it. If we select that, it just goes back to the "no access" and sits there as though it cannot read the disk. However, when it is in TargetMode and connected to our Distribution Point through thunderbolt, we can access the disk and see that all of our applications and settings for the admin account are there.

I've tried re-imaging the machine using the same image that worked on other models such as a MacBook Pro, but that has not worked either. So I'm not sure if I'm doing something wrong, or there's a piece of the puzzle missing that I'm not getting.

[dmw3]

Try booting with Command - R , this will bring it into recovery mode.

[ops]

If it were me I'd boot into Target Mode, then boot another Mac holding down option during boot. Plug the Air into the second mac and boot off of that hard drive. Then reinstall the operating system from USB.

[jhalvorson]

For us, all Macs received from Apple have been arriving with 10.10.0 or 10.10.1 installed. The last ones that slipped through with 10.9.5 were over 3 or 4 weeks ago.

It's possible that yours are arriving with 10.10 and your installing 10.9.x without first erasing the drive. This could leave some 10.10 parts mixed in with some 10.9, leaving a non-working OS.

I haven't used target disk mode in a long time, but suspect you can click an option to erase the drive prior to imaging.

To my knowledge, the shipping MBAs should still be able to support 10.9. At some point, there will be a revision to the MBA that won't support 10.9 or won't support it very well.

[htse]

Model Number A1466 covers 13-inch MacBook Airs from Mid-2012, Mid-2013 and Early 2014. The model identifier from the source system would help differentiate and isolate the issue. About this Mac or System Profiler should get you the model identifier, either
MacBook Air (Mid-201x)
or
MacBookAirx,y

[perrycj]

Yea the key is finding out what it shipped with. It can only boot to the OS build it ships with or higher. Otherwise, exactly what you described happens.

The best way to get it to what it comes with is booting to command+R and then doing a recovery re-image. That puts whatever came with it back on it.

[petedogg]

It's possible that yours are arriving with 10.10 and your installing 10.9.x without first erasing the drive. This could leave some 10.10 parts mixed in with some 10.9, leaving a non-working OS. I haven't used target disk mode in a long time, but suspect you can click an option to erase the drive prior to imaging.

This. Erase the drive before imaging. I was successful in taking new iMacs we just purchased with Yosemite back to Mavericks without issue. The first thing I did was erase the drive just to be safe.

[nstackhouse]

Hi All,

Turns out what it was doing was erasing not only the recovery partition, but making the entire drive unreadable. We have since created a bootable USB drive and booted it from that. We also then wiped the drive of the image and partitioned it out again and installed Mavericks manually. We'll be doing a thin image from now on with just the overlay of applications.

Thanks everyone!

[bentoms]

@nstackhouse, what partitioning are you doing?

I had some fun with Casper Imaging & Core Storage volumes.

https://macmule.com/2015/01/02/casper-imaging-corestorage-volumes/

[htse]

I was doing imaging recently, and I consciously worked through it, but didn't put the two and two together that to this as well. 10.10 starts the migration to Core Storage Logical Volume Management, the same foundation for Fusion Drive and FileVault 2. So if it's a new system out of the box, you'll have to deconstruct the logical volume first with Disk Utility or diskutil corestorage revert. It also undergoes the conversion process if the OS X Yosemite Installer is run for an interactive upgrade.

We all have our different ways to install an OS X, but NetInstall and NetRestore doesn't undergo this process.

[adkinsan]

Re-paritioning the volume while booted to NB resolved the same issue for us, although we are looking bentom's https://macmule.com/2015/01/02/casper-imaging-corestorage-volumes/ article, and our thanks to the Mac Mule for posting it!

[bentoms]

Thanks @adkinsan!

@htse, yea that's what I've worked to in the link above.