Matt Cone January 17, 2013 TutorialsMac
El Capitan Usb Installer
It’s a good idea to have a bootable emergency drive on hand, just in case disaster strikes your Mac. An emergency drive (also referred to as an OS X Recovery Disk) can help you repair the hard disk, reinstall the operating system, and restore from a Time Machine backup to get your computer back fast.
With previous versions of OS X, you could have used the installation DVD to fix problems. But OS X Mountain Lion is sold in the App Store as a digital download — no physical disk is provided. What’s a maintenance-minded Mac user to do?
Process: I created a USB disk with a bootable El Capitan as per this documentation. Plug-in your USB key on a turned-off computer. Start your Mac, press immediately OPTION (aka ALT) Select the Orange icon (aka a USB stick) labelled El Capitan. If it does not detect it after 10 sec and you only see your hard-drive. Finally, after about 25 more minutes, OS X El Capitan should be successfully installed on the target drive. Boot into El Capitan via the USB Device. After the second reboot, boot from the USB device once again, but this time, select Boot OS X from El Capitan, and select verbose mode. Press Enter and cross your fingers again. If all goes well.
Create your own bootable OS X USB drive, of course! It’s easy, and if you’ve already purchased OS X and have a USB drive that’s 1 GB or larger, it’s completely free. Carry it in your pocket or put it on your keychain so it’s available if the worst-case scenario occurs. You’ll thank yourself for taking the time to complete this project.
Evaluating Your Emergency Drive Options
It can happen to any of us, even those who own brand-new Macs. First your computer starts freezing infrequently, then crashing more often, and then it won’t start at all. For situations like this, you need an emergency drive on hand to start up your computer and troubleshoot the problem.
Emergency USB Drive: Creating a bootable USB drive is your safest bet. This device is self-contained and kept entirely separate from your computer — and any potential problems associated with it. But if you don’t want to create a USB drive, you may have access to two other types of emergency drives, depending on when you purchased your Mac.
Recovery HD: Every Mac running OS X Lion and later has a hidden Recovery HD partition that can be used to boot the computer and repair the hard disk. (To use the Recovery HD partition as your startup disk, hold down Command-R at startup or, if that doesn’t work, option.) But the Recovery HD probably won’t work if the internal hard drive is damaged. When you can’t boot from the regular startup disk, chances are you won’t be able to boot from the Recovery HD either.
Internet Recovery: Macs purchased after OS X Lion was released have an additional feature called Internet Recovery, which works even if your internal hard drive is damaged. If there’s a problem with your computer, it can network-boot from Apple’s servers. First, your computer’s memory and hard drive are checked for major issues. If none are found, your Mac downloads and boots from a Recovery HD image. But even if your Mac has this feature, you’ll still benefit from having an emergency drive, as it can take a while to download the Recovery HD partition.
Purchasing a USB Drive for Your OS X Recovery Disk
If you don’t have a spare USB drive, you’ll need to purchase one. We recommend the Amazon Basics 8 GB USB Flash Drive, which is a simple and affordable option available for less than $10.
Making Your Own Emergency OS X USB Drive
The best option is a Recovery HD partition on a bootable USB drive. This drive provides you with all the tools you need to troubleshoot problems, repair the hard drive, reinstall OS X, and restore from a Time Machine backup. In short, it’s the perfect safety net for those rare times when your internal hard drive is hosed.
Here’s how to create an emergency USB drive:
Connect a hard drive or USB drive to your computer. If the drive is larger than 1 GB, consider partitioning it to make a 1 GB partition for the recovery disk. (If you don’t create a partition, this process will use all of the available space on the drive, no matter how large it is.)
Open the Recovery Disk Assistant application. It’s available for free from Apple’s website.
Accept the license agreement. The Recovery Disk Assistant window appears, as shown below.
Select the disk and then click Continue.
Authenticate with your administrator username and password. The Recovery Disk Assistant creates the recovery disk, as shown below. The process takes approximately five minutes.
When the recovery disk has been created, click Quit.
Like the Recovery HD partition on your startup drive, the emergency drive is invisible when it’s connected to your computer. The Finder won’t provide any indication that it exists, but don’t worry — it’s there, waiting for your signal to help with a disaster!
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Create a bootable USB drive for macOS X versions including El Capitan, Yosemite, Mavericks, Sierra, High Sierra, and Mojave.
Sep 30, 2015 An 8GB or larger USB Flash Drive like these, this will be formatted and turn into the OS X El Capitan bootable installer; The OS X El Capitan installer application must be on the Mac and in the /Applications/ folder, download OS X El Capitan here if you haven’t done so yet (yes. You can re-download it). Therefore, you can create bootable USB for your Mac using Transmac on windows 10/7/8/8.1 here you will learn the easiest method of creating bootable USB. As you know that Mac OS EL Capitan is the newest version among Mac. In here just follow my steps to create a bootable USB installer for your Mac. Is the twelfth major of the Mac operating system. Jun 11, 2015 An 8GB or larger USB Flash Drive, this will be formatted and turn into the OS X El Capitan bootable installer; The OS X El Capitan installer application, this can be downloaded from Apple (either as Public Beta or Developer Beta, or preferably the GM Candidate) Naturally, you’ll also need a OS X 10.11 compatible Mac for the destination.
Recovery Usb Windows 10
It was 2009 when Apple last released a new operating system on physical media. Things have proceeded remarkably smoothly since version 10.7 switched to download-only installers, but there are still good reasons to want an old, reliable USB stick. For instance, if you find yourself doing multiple installs, a USB drive may be faster than multiple downloads (especially if you use a USB 3.0 drive). Or maybe you need a recovery disk for older Macs that don't support the Internet Recovery feature. Whatever the reason, you're in luck, because it's not hard to make one.
As with last year, there are two ways to get it done. There's the super easy way with the graphical user interface and the only slightly less easy way that requires some light Terminal use. Here's what you need to get started.
- A Mac that you have administrator access to, duh. We've created El Capitan USB stick from both Yosemite and El Capitan, but your experience with other versions may vary.
- An 8GB or larger USB flash drive or an 8GB or larger partition on some other kind of external drive. For newer Macs, use a USB 3.0 drive—it makes things significantly faster.
- The OS X 10.11 El Capitan installer from the Mac App Store in your Applications folder. The installer will delete itself when you install the operating system, but it can be re-downloaded if necessary.
- If you want a GUI, you need the latest version of Diskmaker X app. Version 5 is the one with official El Capitan support.
- Diskmaker X is free to download, but the creator accepts donations if you want to support his efforts.
How To Make A Usb Boot For El Capitan Boot
El Capitan Recovery Usb
The easy way
Once you've obtained all of the necessary materials, connect the USB drive to your Mac and run the Diskmaker X app. The app will offer to make installers for OS X 10.9, 10.10, and 10.11, and it should run on OS X versions all the way back to 10.7—support for 10.6 was dropped in the most recent release.
Diskmaker X has actually been around since the days of OS X 10.7 (it was previously known as Lion Diskmaker), and it's still the easiest GUI-based way to go without intimidating newbies. If you're comfortable with the command line, it's still possible to create a disk manually using a Terminal command, which we'll cover momentarily.
Select OS X 10.11 in Diskmaker X, and the app should automatically find the copy you've downloaded to your Applications folder. It will then ask you where you want to copy the files—click 'An 8GB USB thumb drive' if you have a single drive to use or 'Another kind of disk' to use a partition on a larger drive or some other kind of external drive. Choose your disk (or partition) from the list that appears, verify that you'd like to have the disk (or partition) erased, and then wait for the files to copy over. The process is outlined in screenshots above.
The only slightly less-easy way
If you don't want to use Diskmaker X, Apple has actually included a terminal command that can create an install disk for you. /ms-office-2019-for-mac-catalina/. Assuming that you have the OS X El Capitan installer in your Applications folder and you have a Mac OS X Extended (Journaled)-formatted USB drive named 'Untitled' mounted on the system, you can create an El Capitan install drive by typing the following command into the Terminal.
sudo /Applications/Install OS X El Capitan.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/Untitled --applicationpath /Applications/Install OS X El Capitan.app --nointeraction
How To Make A Bootable Usb For Mac El Capitan
The command will erase the disk and copy the install files over. Give it some time, and your volume will soon be loaded up with not just the OS X installer but also an external recovery partition that may come in handy if your hard drive dies and you're away from an Internet connection.
Make El Capitan Usb Installer
El Capitan Direct Download
Whichever method you use, you should be able to boot from your new USB drive either by changing the default Startup Disk in System Preferences or by holding down the Option key at boot and selecting the drive. Once booted, you'll be able to install or upgrade El Capitan as you normally would.