When Apple introduced Yosemite, it changed the way it distributes operating systems for the Mac. Now, you can’t buy a copy of the Mac OS installer. That’s a problem if you have a limited broadband connection or metered broadband connection. You’ll need to create a portable offline installer in these situations.
Download or Purchase the Mac Operating System
The first step is to go to the App Store and search for the current operating system. Currently, that’s El Capitan. If it’s already installed on your Mac, the App store will warn you the operating system is already on your system. If it isn’t already installed or you didn’t purchase it on your current Mac, under El Capitan it will say
How to create El Capitan USB installation with Terminal commands. When your USB flash drive is ready and El Capitan installer downloaded from App Store Open Terminal and type the following sequence of commands: sudo hdiutil attach /Applications/Install OS X El Capitan.app/Contents/SharedSupport/InstallESD.dmg. May 04, 2020 Create Bootable USB for Mac OS X El Capitan with TransMac. A new pop up box will appear, click on the three-dots, and then select the macOS X El Capitan.DMG file from Windows. Then click on OK. Choose Mac OSX El Capitan DMG file. Since the file is huge so it will take quite time to complete. It may take about 20 to 30 mins or more.
Internet too slow? Check out some tools to test your connection.If you’d like to create an installer for an earlier operating system you purchased, you can still do that from the App Store. Go to the
The Easy Way: DiskMaker X
DiskMaker X is a free program that does the hard work of creating the USB installer. They do take donations, so if it’s helpful to you, you might throw some money in the tip jar.
After your open the program, it finds the operating system installers on your Mac. In this example, I’ll create an El Capitan installer. Next you’ll need an 8 GB or larger disk. This media can be a USB stick, but I use an SD card. Since most Macs that run Yosemite have an SD card slot, I think it’s easier.
DiskMaker confirms the disk you want to use for the installer. Then it warns you it needs to erase that disk. Confirm again you have the right disk and then click continue. After authenticating your Mac’s administrator name and password, a few minutes later you’ll have a complete installer.
The Hard Way: Terminal Commands
If you’re more comfortable with terminal than using a third-party program, it is possible to create the installer. You’ll need a disk formatted
After you put in the password, the media creation process begins.
Why Do You Need This?
If you can download it again, why waste a flash drive or an SD card? Ideally, your Mac has a recovery partition you can boot off of to repair problems. Sometimes that partition isn’t there. An offline installer includes disk utility so you can solve problems.
The most common reason though is if your Mac’s hard drive fails. If you only have one Mac, you won’t have an easy way to reinstall the operating system. Creating the installer in advance solves the problem.
This is true for Windows too:It’s handy to have a system repair/recovery disk for Windows 7, Windows 8, or Windows 10
Finally, if you want to reinstall your OS to troubleshoot problems, waiting for the installer takes a long time. When things don’t work, you probably wait for a download. If you’re on a slow connection, the download could take several hours.
Overall for the cost of one small USB flash drive or SD card, you can have the peace of mind that you can solve your Mac problems instantly.
ALSO SEE:5 Free Portable Antivirus Software for Windows to Fix PCs On the Go
The above article may contain affiliate links which help support Guiding Tech. However, it does not affect our editorial integrity. The content remains unbiased and authentic.
Read Next
How to Use the Summarize Tool on Mac
Want to get through lengthy assignments or documents quickly? Here's how to use the Summarize Tool on
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.
Make El Capitan Install Usb
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
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
Make El Capitan Usb Installer
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.