3 days ago - After downloading the installer, connect the USB flash drive or other volume you're. If your Mac is using macOS Sierra or earlier, include the. How to Make a Bootable USB Installer for macOS High Sierra. Let the installer complete, when finished you will be informed that the process has completed. Once you have created the USB boot installer drive for macOS High Sierra, you can either launch it immediately to install macOS High.
Note: This post is part of the the series:. You can always refer back to the table of contents to follow the entire process. This post is in addition to the original instructions with the release of MacOS Sierra. This post will teach you how to make a MacOS Sierra boot drive. In our last chapter, we learned how to in the event we have an issue while reformatting your Macbook Pro. It also serves as an important archive for your data so you can access it and grab files whenever you want them on your ‘new’ Macbook Pro. In this next chapter, we’ll learn how to make a MacOS Sierra boot drive so once the computer is wiped clean, we can tell it to reinstall the brand new operating system and bring it back to glorious life.
Are you ready to get started? Note: You will need an 8 GB flash drive for this little operation. The file you download “Install MacOS Sierra” to your Applications folder.
Open the App Store to go there (you may have to click launch application so do so.). Once you’ve found the app and you’re in the App Store, click FREE and enter in your Apple ID and password. Once you’ve logged in, it will start downloading. This will take some time to download (it will download to your Applications folder, which we want). Take a sip of coffee and wait a bit. Note: After macOS Sierra has downloaded, it will automatically launch the installer to begin the installation process. Close the installer instead.
Format flash drive While you’re waiting for the OS X Yosemite to download, you can format your flash drive. Remember, you’ll need an 8GB thumb drive. You will lose any information you have saved on this drive, so be sure to move any files off of it prior to this step.
Insert the thumb drive into a USB port on the computer. Go to Hard Drive ›› Applications ›› Utilities ›› Click to open Disk Utility. Select the 1st of the two options you have for your flash drive so it’s highlighted.
Click on the ERASE tab. Select Mac OS Extended (Journaled) as the format type and keep the name as “untitled.”. Your flash drive will be erased and it will be formatted properly for Mac. Your drive is ready. Make a MacOS Sierra Boot Drive with Disk Creator (Option 1) Now you’re ready to move the install of MacOS Sierra onto the flash drive. The easiest way is to use a program like DiskCreator.
It’s very easy to create a boot drive for MacOS Sierra with Disk Creator. Download the. Insert an 8GB (or larger) flash drive. If you have any other data on that flash drive, back it up now, because the installer will make everything on it go bye-bye. Open Disc Creator and click the “Select the OS X Installer” button.
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Find the Sierra installer file. This is should be located in your Applications folder. Select your flash drive from the drop-down menu. Click “Create Installer.” When it’s done, insert your USB drive into any Mac, then launch the installer by holding down the Option key when you boot up your computer. Make a MacOS Sierra Boot Drive with Terminal (Option 2) If you want this process to happen faster, you can manually add in the commands with Terminal. This is faster than the DiskMaker X option but you will have to add in a command.
Insert your flash drive (12GB recommended) into a USB port on your computer. Click on the name of the drive once, so it highlights. Change the name to: Untitled. (The code we’re going to enter will assume this drive is named Untitled.). Go to Applications›› Utilities ›› Terminal. Open the program.
You’ll see a scary-looking programming box come up. Don’t be scared. We’re going to add a piece of code that will copy MacOS Sierra to the thumb drive. Select the text of this Terminal command and copy it: sudo /Applications/Install macOS Sierra.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia -volume /Volumes/Untitled -applicationpath /Applications/Install macOS Sierra.app. Paste the copied command into Terminal and press Return. Warning: This step will erase the destination drive or partition, so make sure it doesn’t contain any valuable data. Enter your admin-level account password when prompted.
Now you’ll see the following messages: Erasing Disk: 0%. Copying installer files to disk. This process will take about 30 minutes or so (depending on the speed of you computer). I was a bit worried that it was taking longer than expected.
If you think it’s messed up, just wait longer. Give it 45 minutes if it needs it. Maybe an hour if your computer is really slow. Once done, congratulations! You have your bootable MacOS Sierra drive.
Keep this for any future projects (although you’ll want to update to the newest version of MacOS Sierra installer before attempting this process again if any length of time passes by.) NOTE: (4.): This process will not work with Snow Leopard. It works only in Lion, Mountain Lion, Mavericks, Yosemite and Sierra. If you need to create a MacOS Sierra install drive while booted into Snow Leopard, you should use Disk Utility instructions found.
The process of installing OS X or macOS on a Mac hasn't changed a great deal since altered the delivery of the OS from optical disks to electronic downloads, using the. The big advantage to downloading the Mac OS is, of course, immediate gratification (and not having to pay shipping charges).
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But the downside is that the installer you download is deleted as soon as you make use of it by installing the Mac operating system. With the installer gone, you lose the opportunity to install the OS on more than one Mac without having to go through the download process again. You also lose out on having an installer that you can use to perform that completely overwrite your startup drive, or having an emergency bootable installer that includes a few useful utilities that can bail you out of an emergency. To overcome these limitations of the installer for OS X or macOS, all you need is a USB drive that contains a bootable copy of the installer. There are two ways to make a bootable copy of the installer; one makes use of, the command-line utility included with all copies of OS X and macOS; the other uses a combination of the, and Terminal to get the job done. In the past, I've always shown you the manual method, which uses the Finder, Disk Utility, and Terminal. Although this method involves more steps, it's easier for many Mac users because the majority of the process uses familiar tools.
This time around, I'm going to show you the Terminal app method, which uses a single command that has been included with the Mac OS installer since OS X Mavericks was released. Note: The is the last version of the installer with which we verified this manual method using the Finder, Disk Utility, and Terminal. The general recommendation is to skip the manual method for any version of the Mac OS that is newer than OS X Mavericks, and instead use the Terminal method and the createinstallmedia command, as outlined below. Before you begin, stop. That may sound a bit daft, but as I mentioned above, if you use the OS X or macOS installer, it will likely delete itself from your Mac as part of the installation process. So, if you haven't yet used the installer you downloaded, don't.
If you've already installed the Mac OS, you can re-download the installer following these instructions:. If you're just now downloading the installer, you'll notice that once the download is complete, the installer will start up on its own. You can just quit the installer, the same way you'd quit any other Mac app. Getty Images You should already have the OS X or macOS installer on your Mac. It will be located in the /Applications folder, with one of the following names:. A USB flash drive.
That is 8 GB in size or larger. I suggest a flash drive in the 32 GB to 64 GB range, as they seem to be the sweet spot in cost and performance. The actual size of the bootable version of the installer varies, depending on which version of the Mac OS you're installing, but so far, none has gone over 8 GB in size.
A Mac that meets the minimum requirements for the OS you're installing:. If you have everything you need, let's get started, using the createinstallmedia command. It's not really that much of a secret, but ever since, the Mac OS installers have contained a command hidden inside the installer package that takes what used to be a complex process for creating a bootable copy of the installer, and turns it into a single command you enter into. This Terminal command, called createinstallmedia, can create a bootable copy of the installer using any drive connected to your Mac. In this guide, we're going to use a USB flash drive, but you could also use a normal hard drive or SSD that's connected to your Mac.
The process is the same, regardless of the destination. Whatever media you use to create the bootable Mac OS installer on, it will be completely erased by the createinstallmedia command, so be careful. Whether you're going to use a flash drive, a hard drive, or an SSD, be sure to any data on the drive before you begin this process. How to Use the Createinstallmedia Terminal Command. Make sure that the Mac OS installer file is present in your /Applications folder. If it's not there, or you're not sure of its name, seethe previous section of this guide for details on the installer file name, and how to download the needed file. Plug your USB flash drive into your Mac.
Check the flash drive's content. During this process, so if there's any data on the flash drive that you want to save, back it up to another location before proceeding. Change the flash drive's name to FlashInstaller. You can do this by double-clicking the drive's name to select it, and then type in the new name. You can actually use any name you wish, but it must exactly match the name you enter in the createinstallmedia command below. For this reason, I strongly suggest using a name with no spaces and no special characters.
If you use FlashInstaller as the drive's name, you can just copy/paste the command line below instead of typing the rather long command into Terminal. Launch Terminal, located in /Applications/Utilities. Warning: The following command will completely erase the drive named FlashInstaller. In the Terminal window that opens, enter one of the following commands, depending on which OS X or macOS installer you're working with. The command, which starts with the text 'sudo' and ends with the word 'nointeraction' (with no quotes), can be copy/pasted into Terminal unless you used a name other than FlashInstaller.