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Solve You Cannot Install Mac OS X on This Volume' - Mac Error

If you have connected a hard disk to your Intel based mac and try to install Mac OS X on that hard disk then you will see alert in installer and unable to select the disk for installation.

"You cannot install Mac OS X on this volume. Mac OS X cannot start up from this volume."

This is the message which you will get. Here Mac OS X installer prevents you from installing on to a disk that uses a non-native partition scheme. Intel based Mac has different native scheme than Power PC based Mac. Intel based Mac systems are compatible with Apple_partition_scheme whereas power PC based Mac only used with GUID_partition_scheme. In such case, user fails to select the disk. This is the issue related with non native partitioning scheme with respect to system processor. Though operating system installed on a volume but the issue is hard disk partitioning scheme.

To resolve -- You Cannot Install Mac OS X on This Volume' - Mac Error

 

For this you need to repartition the drive to match the native partition scheme for your computer's processor type. Partitioning is the process which splits the disk in to two or more volumes. Now you can choose one partition to solve the error issue.

Here are the steps to partition hard disk—

  1. Open Disk Utility. Choose Disk Utility from the Utilities menu if you are started from a Mac OSX but if you have started from computer's Mac OS X volume then open Disk Utility from the Utilities folder. There you can get Utilities from the Finder's Go menu.
  2. Now select the disk which you want to partition, this mean the disk where you want to install Mac OS X.
  3. In the Disk Utility Windows choose Partition tab.
  4. From the Volume Scheme pop-up menu, choose the desired number of partition. If you want one partition then choose “1 partition”. Click Option.
  5. Choose “GUID Partition Scheme” from the partition Scheme pop-up menu. Click Ok.
  6. On the Partition tab click to erase data.
  7. Now Mac OS X can be installed with the updated partition scheme.

It is important to note that repartitioning erase disk and data stored in it so make backup of data before starting this process. After completing the process you can restore data from the backup but if you are not having backup then no need to worry as you can recover lost data from the hard disk with the use of the mac data recovery software.