Help I deleted my hard drive (Macbook Pro Mid-2012)

[corymacs]

Apple won't ever offer a downgrade. You have to go looking for it and usually a downgrade involves a nuke/pave approach where you reformat and repartition the drive completely to get rid of the more modern version and install from scratch. If you have Catalina on it now, just leave it there. All of the Adobe products should work (unless they are very, very old versions you are attempting to install). To get back to Mojave, you would have to totally erase the hard drive as Catalina has made significant changes to it that will not work with Mojave. I'm running Catalina and it's just fine. All you need to avoid are 32-bit applications as Catalina won't run them at all.

Just a comment on a previous post, just to be clear:

Bootcamp is not downloaded as an add-on, it is a component of macOS that allows you to install Windows in a separate partition and dual boot. To do that you need a license for Windows. You run bootcamp from macOS to create the partition for Windows, then install Windows in that partition and then install tools for macOS to be able to offer the option to boot the OS you want. If the previous owner had Windows in Bootcamp, and if the installer saw the partition, then the hard drive is still divided and you are not getting full access to it. So going back to Mojave and reformatting the ENTIRE drive will get that space back for you as a side benefit.

gotcha. that sounds a little bit more complicated for someone like me to get involved with. i think i'll just stick with catalina as you said, even though it seems like mojave is awesome and i haven't seen many people brag too much about catalina... idk. as long as adobe products work well then i'm golden.

the bootcamp thing confused me, as it must be something the previous owner did. it would be nice to get that extra 50GB of space back that bootcamp is using, but might be not worth the effort involved (for someone relatively inexperienced like me at least).

thanks for your input.

Apple's link to download Mojave from the Mac App Store: LINK

thank you my friend

 

[MacInWin]

It's not hard, or even really complicated. It's just not obvious. The installer you would get from NSMacguru's link, for example, won't run in Catalina because it checks to see what version is currently installed and if it's older than what is already there, it won't execute. So to "back up" from Catalina, you have to make a bootable external device, typically on a USB Thumb drive, with the Mojave installer on it, boot from that, erase the drive and reformat it, then install the OS. There is a great third party product called "DiskmakerX" that will make that bootable drive for you. So, you could download the installer, get and run DiskmakerX, follow the prompts to make a USB stick bootable, boot from that and do the work. One benefit would be that you could recover the 50GB that is lost on Bootcamp.

However, if the 50Gb isn't that critical, Catalina is pretty solid, as long as you don't try to run 32 bit software. Apple warned developers and users for over two years that Catalina would not support that older tech, but some just didn't listen.

 

[Rod]

I’m a little unclear as to where you are at the moment. Do you have a functional operating system up and running on the device at the moment?
If so then by all means download the Mojave installer from the link provided in the last post. Check in About This Mac > Storage under the Apple Menu to ensure you only have one partition ie Macintosh HD and if so you can install Mojave. It’s a good stable current OS which will ensure you can run 32bit apps if need be.
If you have a Bootcamp partition you will need to create a bootable installer from the Mojave installer app. That is simple enough and a handy tool to have anyway. With it you can boot your device, erase the HD thus getting rid of the Windows partition and install Mojave.


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[krs]

I’m a little unclear as to where you are at the moment. Do you have a functional operating system up and running on the device at the moment?

When I replied in post #17, it sounded as if cory was asking for advice if he should install Mojave or Catalina.
I suggested Mojave, but it seems Catalina was already installed at that time and that's the OS on the Mac now.

 

[Rod]

Ah, I see, well it would be possible to go back to Mojave via the method I described if that’s still the intention.


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