Chosen Solution
The long story: I am getting ready to do some hardware upgrades to my 20” iMac 7,1 (I have installed 2GB RAM to make 6GB total and next I will replace the HDD fan and install a new SSD) I was also having problems with backing up and repairing permissions so I ran DiskWarrior to rebuild the directory and repair corrupted files. I am trying to install El Capitan (currently running Snow Leopard 10.6.8) on the old drive before I put in the new one, but it gets part way through the installation and then stops and gives this message: “OS X could not be installed on your computer. The partition cannot be resized. Try reducing the amount of change in the size of the partition.” I have no idea what I am supposed to do. I just want to upgrade my OS and don’t see why it would require resizing the partition nor do I have any idea how I would “Try reducing the amount of change in the size of the partition”. I wanted to upgrade the system before I clone to the new drive, but should I just wait till I have the new drive installed and then try to upgrade? Any help with next steps would be greatly appreciated.
What is the make and model number of your new drive? Have you checked to see if it is backward compatible? Did you format the new drive GUID and Mac OS X Extended before trying to install the system? How many partitions have you set up of the new drive? How is the new drive currently connected to your Mac?
