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I have a late 2013 macbook pro 13" A1502 (“A”). Recently the computer would not boot, so i wiped the hard drive via target disk mode via thunderbolt with my 2011 macbook pro 17" (“B”) and installed the operating system. Laptop A worked fine with High Sierra. However, my father kept complaining how slow it was now. I wiped again in target disk mode and attempted to install mavericks with no luck (got prohibitory sign on boot after i installed). I guess there is obviously a problem with the 13" logic board, however the thunderbolt connection is able to detect the SSD. My question is: Is it possible to successfully image the 13" from the 17" while the 13" is in target disk mode?"
Might be the format the SSD is set for
You’ll need to create an OS installer drive following this guide: How to create a bootable macOS High Sierra installer drive That way you can re-install High Sierra onto your fathers MacBook Pro. Don’t use cloning software it just makes a mess of things. More so now with the newer drive format your system has. Just to clarify when the installer see’s the drive is a SSD it will automatically upgrade the format to APFS. You can’t stop it. That is why you are seeing the prohibitory sign when you attempted to down grade the OS as the older OS can’t run on the newer drive format.
