how to create a install disk for os x el capitan

Create A Disk For Os X El Capitan Mac If Its

Create A Disk For Os X El Capitan Mac If Its

When OS X shipped on a DVD a good number of years ago, you always had the convenience of a bootable installeran OS X installer that could be used to boot your Mac if its own drive was having problems.

But to install or reinstall a recent version of OS X, you must either download a non-bootable installer from the Mac App Store or (via OS Xs invisible, bootable recovery partition ) download 6GB of installer data from Apples servers during the installation process.

In other words, you no longer have the same safety net or convenience.

And if your Mac is experiencing problems, a bootable installer drive makes a handy emergency disk.

In this respect, the OS X installer is just like any other app you buy from the Mac App Store.

If you plan to use the OS X installer on other Macs, orin this caseto create a bootable installer drive, be sure to copy the installer to another drive, or at least move it out of the Applications folder, before you use it to install the OS on your Mac.

If you dont, youll have to redownload the installer from the Mac App Store before you can use the instructions below.

This can be a hard drive, a solid-state drive (SSD), a thumb drive, or a USB stickan 8GB thumb drive is perfect.

Your drive must be formatted as a Mac OS Extended (Journaled) volume with a GUID Partition Table.

Follow this tutorial to properly format the drive if youre using OS X Yosemite or older.

Apples gift: createinstallmedia In my articles on creating a bootable installer drive for older versions of OS X, I provided three, or even four, different ways to perform the procedure, depending on which version of OS X you were running, your comfort level with Terminal, and other factors.

That approach made sense in the past, but a number of the reasons for it no longer apply, so this year Im limiting the instructions to a single method: using OS Xs own createinstallmedia tool.

Starting with Mavericks, the OS X installer hosts a hidden Unix program called createinstallmedia specifically for creating a bootable installer drive.

Using it requires the use of Terminal, but createinstallmedia works well, its official, and performing the procedure requires little more than copying and pasting.

Note that the window that displays the command scrolls to the right.

Copying boot files.

Copy complete. The procedure can take as little as a couple minutes, or as long as 20 to 30 minutes, depending on how fast your Mac can copy data to the destination drive.

Once you see Copy Complete.

Done., as shown in the screenshot above, the process has finished.

You can rename the drive (in the Finder) if you likerenaming it wont prevent it from working properly.

Then, restart your Mac (or, if its currently shut down, start it up) while holding down the Option key.

When OS Xs Startup Manager appears, select the installer drive and then click the arrow below it to proceed with startup.

Alternatively, if your Mac is already booted into OS X, you may be able to choose the installer drive in the Startup Disk pane of System Preferences, and then click restart.

However, sometimes OS X installer drives dont appear in the Startup Disk window.) Once booted from your installer drive, you can perform any of the tasks available from the OS X installers special recovery and restore features.

In fact, youll see the same OS X Utilities screen you get when you boot into OS X Recoverybut unlike with recovery mode, your bootable installer includes the entire installer.

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How To Create A Install Disk For Os X El Capitan