When installing the OS to a USB stick, make sure it has an EFI partition and put the boot loader there. Surface only supports EFI boot.

• Create a USB install media using OSX - https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/how-make-a-windows-10-usb-using-your-mac-build-a-bootable-iso-from-your-macs-terminal/
• Boot Surface with USB Installer

The regular installation ISOs did not work to install from. Failed after choosing installation disk. No problems to install Ubuntu to the same disk.

Windows 11 Installer made by media creation tool did not work either.

I suspect there is some kind of hardware issue, probably the cause why the existing Windows 11 installation broke in the first place.

Working procedure for Surface:

Prerequisites:
- USB Keyboard/Mouse. The installer does not support the Surface keyboard/touch pad.
- Another Windows machine to run the Media Creation Tool

1. Create Windows 1o USB installer with media creation tool
2. Boot and install Windows 10 from USB
3. Run Windows Update
4. Download Windows 11 Installation Assistant - Download Windows 11
5. Download PC Health Check app - PC Health Check App
6. Install and Run PC Health Check App
7. Start the Windows 11 Installation Assistant
8. Run the Windows 11 Pro upgrade in Microsoft Store
9. Enable Remote Desktop
10. Change sign in options to not only allow Hello Pin
11. Logout and login with Microsoft password instead of PIN

Resolution: Disable kernel-mode SMB Daemon
Control Panel -> Win/Mac/NFS/WebDAV -> Advanced Options -> Untick 'Enable kernel-mode SMD daemon'

I had to restart the NAS for it to work.

Source: Time machine stopped working (solved with workaround) - QNAP NAS Community Forum

Note that rebuilding of a new disk can take days.

1. Control Panel -> Storage & Snapshots -> Storage/Snapshots
2. Click Manage
3. Storage Pool -> Manage -> Replace Disks On by One
4. Choose HDD1 -> Change
5. Remove current HDD1
6. Insert new HDD1
7. Wait for rebuilding to complete
8. Choose HDD2 -> Change
9. Remove current HDD2
10. Insert new HDD2

# check raid status cli
cat /proc/mdstat 

# check min/max rebuild speed
cat /proc/sys/dev/raid/speed_limit_max
cat /proc/sys/dev/raid/speed_limit_min

# change value
echo 50000 >/proc/sys/dev/raid/speed_limit_min

11. Storage Pool -> Manage -> Replace Disks On by One
12. Click Expand Capacity

Working Procedure January 2004

Preparations:

• Get the El Capitan Installer from How to download and install macOS - Apple Support. Install the El Capitan installer and create a bootable partition on the firewire disk. Probably requires a working old iMac.

sudo /Applications/Install\ OS\ X\ El\ Capitan.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/MyVolume --applicationpath /Applications/Install\ OS\ X\ El\ Capitan.app

• External FireWire 800 Disk with El Capitan USB Installer and a partition for OS Installation
• NVRAM Reset (cmd + alt + p + r)

Procedure:

1. Boot and hold option key
2. Choose El Capitan USB Installer partition as startup disk
3. Choose option to Install OSX
4. Complete installation on iMac 2013
5. Login
6. Open Safari
7. Download the ISRG Root X1 (direct download) certificate file.
8. Open the Keychain Access app and drag that file into the System folder of that app.
9. Find the ISRG Root X1 certificate in System and double click on it, open the Trust menu and change "Use System Defaults" to "Always Trust", then close that and enter your password to confirm the change
10. Make a Time Machine backup to the startup disk and hope that partition will survive a future disk crash, disable this backup for future backups.

Conclusions:

• No need to change date.
• If getting bless errors in the final step of installation, NVRAM reset seems to do the trick.
• Any installations relying on online downloads seem to fail bad due to certificate issues client side/server side.
• It is possible to install the OS on another iMac and move the disk.
• Old iMacs are a pain in the ass when the internal disk dies.

Notes from earlier attempts

Command line from USB Installer Boot:

#Applications -> Terminal
installer -pkg /Volumes/Mac\ OS\ X\ Install\ DVD/Packages/OSInstall.mpkg -target /Volumes/<Target Disk>

Failed due to bless command not able to set startup disk. Says nvram is not supported.

A lot of errors about fonts, seems it actually does not affect the installation. This is how it can be installed though.

#Install Google Noto fonts to USB installer at
/System/Library/Fonts

Currently unable to successfully install using the iMac Early 2009. This has worked two times before booting from the USB Installer and installing to external disk connected by firewire cable.

It works to install to the external disk by booting from the USB Installer on an iMac Late 2013 and then install to the external disk.

The installer is stuck for a long time at 'a second left'. Then it reboots and gets stuck at the beginning of the loading bar. After some waiting it will reboot again and present the initial setup screen for a new El Capitan installer.

After setup and successful boot the disk is moved to the iMac early 2009. The OS boots up but gets stuck at a blurred mountain desktop background with a spinning ball.

Creating Mountain Lion installer to a partition:

# Disk Utility fails to restore from the disk image
# Create Mountain Lion Installer
sudo /usr/sbin/asr restore --source /Path/to/mountain/Lion/installer.app/Contents/SharedSupport/InstallESD.dmg --target /Volumes/<USB Volume> --erase

Successful Procedure

This is what finally worked to get OS X onto an iMac early 2009

Prerequisites

One external disk with firewire and USB connectors. With the following partitions

• USB Installer for OSX Yosemite
• USB Installer for El Capitan
• Empty partition as installation target

Another iMac with support for Yosemite, in this case an iMac 27 Late 2013

Procedure:

1. Connect the external disk by USB to iMac 27 2013
2. Boot and hold option key
3. Choose Yosemite USB Installer partition as startup disk
4. Choose option to Install OSX
5. Complete installation on iMac 2013
6. Shutdown iMac 2013
7. Disconnect external disk and connect by firewire to iMac 2009
8. Boot and hold option key
9. Choose the installation target partition as startup disk
10. Yosemite is now booting successfully on iMac 24 2009
11. At the login screen provide your credentials and login
12. Fix expired root certificates
13. Move disk to iMac 27 2013
14. Boot to El Capitan USB Installer
15. Upgrade OSX to El Capitan
16. Move disk to iMac 2009
17. At this point it boots to black screen with cursor only
18. Reset NVRAM, Boot with cmd + alt + p + r
19. After this a login screen appears and OSX is functioning
20. Create an El Capitan TimeMachine backup of the inital state. Use this in the future to avoid the installers with all possible problem due to unsupported hardware/software/date

Conclusion:

It seems as NVRAM had part in this issue. Potentially it might have worked to install El Capitan on iMac 2009 if just nvram was reset. During initial runs the El Capitan installer failed at the last step saying it could not bless the disk, nvram was not supported. We'll see if I try again...

However using App Store to upgrade to El Capitan seems not very straight forward due to the online nature and certificate issues with dates.

I created a partition on my disk with a proper El Capitan time machine backup for future use. If the disk breaks again I can use this unless that partition is broken too, fingers crossed.. (Backup to another place too..)

Future Procedure iMac 2009:

1. Boot to El Capitan USB Installer
2. Install OSX to external disk
3. If issues with bless, reset NVRAM. cmd + alt + p + r
4. Restart at 1.
5. If successful, fix certificates, otherwise go to 9.
6. Download the ISRG Root X1 (direct download) certificate file.
7. Open the Keychain Access app and drag that file into the System folder of that app.
8. Find the ISRG Root X1 certificate in System and double click on it, open the Trust menu and change "Use System Defaults" to "Always Trust", then close that and enter your password to confirm the change (if prompted).
9. If still failing, use Time Machine backup