Make El Capitan Usb Installer

  • Apr 26, 2021 Use Terminal to Create the El Capitan Bootable USB Installer. Follow these steps to create a bootable USB installer of El Capitan in Terminal. Connect the USB flash drive to your Mac. Give the flash drive an appropriate name. You can do this by double-clicking the device's name on the desktop and then typing a new name.
  • Here's how you can create a Mac OS X El Capitan bootable USB flash drive. OS X El Capitan is finally here, and if you're looking to install Apple's new desktop OS fresh from the ground up, then.

Bootable USB Stick - macOS X El Capitan 10.11 - Full OS Install, Reinstall, Recovery and Upgrade SANDISK USB FLASH DRIVE 2.0/3.1 - 16GB - 5 years warranty Latest certificate (expires These USBs are NOT produced by Apple. Installing or upgrading your software from an USB is a quick process and can take 10-15 minutes to complete.

*Quick note from Save Apple Dollars - Older OS X Images can now be downloaded directly from Apple at https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT211683 please right click on the image link and select “save as”.

By Roman Loyola at www.macworld.com

Senior Editor, Macworld | JUL 3, 2017 1:32 PM PDT

Apple uses its App Store to distribute its software, like new Mac operating systems. It’s convenient, but sometimes it can take a while for a download to finish. And if you have multiple Macs, it’s inefficient to download the new OS to each and every Mac.

That’s why I like to make a bootable external drive for the sole purpose of installing the Mac operating system. When I need to tend to a bunch of Macs, it’s much faster to use a bootable drive instead of going to each Mac, launching the App Store, searching for the operating system, downloading it (after entering my Apple ID), and then running the installer.

You can create a bootable USB flash drive with the macOS Sierra installer that’s now available. The installer software will take up nearly 5GB of storage space. Here’s how to create a bootable macOS Sierra installer drive.

Macworld also has bootable-install-drive instructions for:

Lion (OS X 10.7)

Download the macOS Sierra installer

Launch the App Store app, then look for macOS Sierra in the store. (Here’s a link.) Click on the Download button, and your Mac will download the installer to your Applications folder. If it automatically launches after download, quit the installer.

Keep the installer in the Applications folder.

If you’ve already upgraded your Mac to Sierra, the installer is removed from the Applications folder. You can download it again if you go to Purchased in the App Store. Look for macOS Sierra in the list of apps that you’ve bought, and click on the Download button. If it automatically launches after download, quit the installer.

Get an external drive

You can use a USB flash drive or a hard drive with room for the installer software. I’ve used different drives with success, including a VisionTek 120GB USB 3.0 Pocket Solid State Drive ($83 on Amazon) and an old 8GB Iomega Micro Mini Hard Drive.

Don’t worry if the drive isn’t formatted for the Mac. The drive will be reformatted automatically as part of the process. Change the name of your drive to Untitled; you need to do this for the steps below.

The quick and easy way

Create El Capitan Usb Installer From Windows

The process detailed below involves the Terminal. If your really don’t want to use Terminal, there are a couple of free apps you can use.

  • Install Disk Creator is a straightforward way to create a boot disk. I was able to make a macOS Sierra external USB boot disk in a few minutes, and the installation worked without a hitch. Also works with older versions of OS X.

  • Diskmaker X is a popular app. It also supports older versions of OS X.

Use the Terminal to create a boot disk

So you have your external drive, and the Sierra beta installer is in place. Now you’re going to use Terminal to create a boot drive. If you’ve never used Terminal before, don’t worry. This is pretty easy.

Here are the steps to create a macOS Sierra beta boot disk. (Apple also has these instructions.)

Make El Capitan Usb Installer
  1. Connect the external drive to your Mac. (In the Terminal command you will use, I use Untitled to represent your external drive. If your drive is named something else, you need to change Untitled to the name of your drive.)

  2. Launch Terminal (/Applications/Utilities/Terminal.app).

  3. Copy the following:
    sudo /Applications/Install macOS Sierra.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/Untitled --applicationpath /Applications/Install macOS Sierra.app

  4. Go back to Terminal and paste the copied code at the prompt.

  5. Terminal will ask for a password. This is your user password. Terminal doesn’t display characters when you type it in. Hit Return.

  6. Terminal will tell you that it will erase your drive. To confirm that you want to continue, type Y and hit Return.

  7. You’ll see that Terminal erases your drive. When that part is done, your Mac may ask you if you want to use the drive for Time Machine. Click Don’t Use.

  8. Terminal will copy the installer file to your drive. This will take a few minutes.

  9. After copying, Terminal is done. You should see Terminal display a “Copy complete” and Done notice. You can quit Terminal and your drive is ready for use.

How to boot from the installer drive

  1. Plug your external drive into your Mac.

  2. Power up (or restart) your Mac. Press down on the Option key while the Mac boots.

  3. After a few moments, your Mac should display the Startup Manager, which will show you the available boot drives. Click on the external drive and hit Return. (You don’t need to select a network to proceed.)

  4. Your Mac will display an OS X Utilites window. If you want to install Sierra and leave the data intact, select Install OS X. If you want to start over and wipe out the data, you need to go into Disk Utility to reformat the internal drive first, and then install macOS Sierra.

Full Credit for this article is given to Roman Loyola and www.macworld.com please visit their website for more helpful information about fixing Macs.


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

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.

Make el capitan usb installer online

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

Don’t fear terminal: Make el capitan install usbThere some cool tricks you can do it in or just be more productive.sudo /Applications/Install OS X El Capitan.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia –volume /Volumes/ElCapinstall –applicationpath /Applications/Install OS X El Capitan.app –nointeraction

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

Make

Install El Capitan From Usb


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