Most of the Mac users who use the Intel based Mac night have not faced the error but if you try to Install a Mac OS X on the hard drive that uses the Intel based Mac, you will encounter this error.
The error message will sound something of this sort.
Error: You cannot install Mac OS X on this volume
This error usually occurs as the Mac Installer doesn't allow you to install on to a disk that uses a non-native partition scheme. There exists two types of native schemes; one for the Intel based Mac and the other is the Power Based Mac. The Intel Based Mac is compatible with the Apple_partition_scheme. The Power Based Mac is compatible with the GUID_partition_scheme. So if you are trying to install an Intel based Mac onto the Power based Mac, thats the reason you are unable to select the drive. You can see that the Operating system is installed but you will still encounter an error as the issue is related to the hard disk partitioning.
This error is not a big one; to resolve the issue you need to repartition the hard drive to match the native partition scheme. When such a partition is created you won't face the error. To partition the hard drive or resize the Mac Partition you can opt for a Mac Utility that is a partition manager or if you do not want to spend money for such an issue lets see what one should do.
Here is what we can do:
- Open disk utility from the Utilities menu or from the Utilities folder.
- Now you need to select the disk on which you want to install Mac OS X.
- Select the partition tab in the Disk utility Windows.
- You will then see a pop up menu from which you have to choose the desired number of partitions you are looking for.
- Now choose GUID Partition scheme from the pop up menu and then click OK.
- On the partition tab click erase data.
- Now you will see that you are able to install Mac OS X on the updated partition scheme.
One most important thing in the whole process is that the data while repartitioning is deleted so I suggest that you properly backup your data before you opt for repartitioning. If in case you have lost the data in the process then you can opt for the data recovery Mac software. I won't recommend any software to use but take advice from the most reliable resource that is Wikipedia's List of Best Data Recovery Software