Confirm that the USB drive will lose it’s data and enter the Admin password when asked; Disk Utility will now create a bootable OS X Mountain Lion installer drive out of USB drive using the disk image, this can take a little while depending on how fast the drive and Mac are but 20-30 minutes isn’t unusual. Better support under Linux through PlayOnLinux software allowing easy install/uninstall. Improved OS X User Interface and compatibiltiy with OS X 10.11 El Capitan. Updated license usage. BugFix: - Improved Memory usage and minor optimization and improvements. Fixed various minor bugs - Fixed minor bug when saving compressed TIFF files.
These advanced steps are primarily for system administrators and others who are familiar with the command line. You don't need a bootable installer to upgrade macOS or reinstall macOS, but it can be useful when you want to install on multiple computers without downloading the installer each time.
My IMAC (2012) will not create an El Capitan install disk. I tried the method you recommend with terminal and i also used Diskmaker X5. For both ways, the system went thru the entire copying process. However, at the end the last two lines show “Erasing 0%,.10%.20%.30%.100%” and then “The copy of the installer app failed.”. To install El Capitan, make sure the USB drive is inserted into the computer, then restart the computer while holding the Option (alt) key on your keyboard. Wait until the Startup Manager pops up, then select the 'OS X Base System' volume. Alternatively, you can just hold down the C key while starting up to boot directly into the USB drive. Purchase Mac OS X Lion installer on the Apple Store. When it was still Lion DiskMaker, DiskMaker X had the ability to burn DVDs too. Older versions are available here. Download DiskMaker 2.0.2 ( ZIP file, about 3 MB). NB: this version of DiskMaker X is not able to build a Mavericks installer from Mac OS X 10.6.8. Once done, close the Disk Utility window and install El Capitan onto the destination hard drive. Now once the installation is complete, your PC will restart automatically, but it won’t boot into OS X as the system drive hasn’t been made bootable yet.
MyVolume
in these commands with the name of your volume.Big Sur:*
Catalina:*
Mojave:*
High Sierra:*
El Capitan:
* If your Mac is using macOS Sierra or earlier, include the --applicationpath
argument and installer path, similar to the way this is done in the command for El Capitan.
After typing the command:
Y
to confirm that you want to erase the volume, then press Return. Terminal shows the progress as the volume is erased.Determine whether you're using a Mac with Apple silicon, then follow the appropriate steps:
For more information about the createinstallmedia
command and the arguments that you can use with it, make sure that the macOS installer is in your Applications folder, then enter the appropriate path in Terminal:
A bootable installer doesn't download macOS from the internet, but it does require an internet connection to get firmware and other information specific to the Mac model.
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.
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.
AdvertisementDiskmaker 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.
If you don't want to use Diskmaker X, Apple has actually included a terminal command that can create an install disk for you. 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
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.
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.