*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”.
Step-by-step instructions on how to create a bootable OS X El Capitan install USB drive.
By Roman Loyola at www.macworld.com
Senior Editor, Macworld | JUL 3, 2017 1:32 PM PDT
Using This Tutorial You will Be Able to Create Your Very Own Bootable USB Flash Drive using Apple Newest Operating System El Capitan in 3 easy. Apple allows you to upgrade to the new OS X El Capitan directly from the installed OS X Yosemite, but at least once every couple of years it is recommended to do a “clean” installation.
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.
Apple El Capitan Bootable Usb Windows 10
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
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.)
Connect the external drive to your Mac. (In the Terminal command you will use, I use
Untitledto represent your external drive. If your drive is named something else, you need to changeUntitledto the name of your drive.)Launch Terminal (/Applications/Utilities/Terminal.app).
Copy the following:
sudo /Applications/Install macOS Sierra.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/Untitled --applicationpath /Applications/Install macOS Sierra.appGo back to Terminal and paste the copied code at the prompt.
Terminal will ask for a password. This is your user password. Terminal doesn’t display characters when you type it in. Hit Return.
Terminal will tell you that it will erase your drive. To confirm that you want to continue, type Y and hit Return.
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.
Terminal will copy the installer file to your drive. This will take a few minutes.
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
Plug your external drive into your Mac.
Power up (or restart) your Mac. Press down on the Option key while the Mac boots.
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.)
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.
If your Mac suddenly refuses to boot up properly, you might need a bootable macOS USB installer to make repairs. But how do you create such a disk if all you're left with is a Windows 10 computer? Fortunately, there's a great tool that you can use for free to create bootable macOS media on a USB drive in a Windows 10 environment. This article shows you how to download a macOS DMG file, format a USB drive using a GUID Partition Table, burn the DMG to the drive and boot your Mac from the USB. All the steps except the last one are done on a Windows 10 machine.
Part 1: Download macOS or Mac OS X DMG File
The first step is to get the DMG disk image file for the version of macOS that you want. You can get a copy of the latest macOS version from Apple download portal or App Store here. There are also several other direct download sites that offer various versions of Mac OS X in DMG format rather than the standard APP format that runs on Mac. Since you're working in a Windows environment, you need the DMG rather than the APP file.
macOS DMG Download Link:
Part 2: Easily Create a Bootable macOS USB from Windows 10/8/7 PC
You have now formatted the partition of USB drive. It's time to download UUByte DMG Editor for Windows. Although this is a premium software, you can use the initial free trial period to create a bootable macOS USB on Windows 10. After installing the application, follow the sequence of steps shown below:
Updates (Dec 8, 2020): The latest version of UUByte DMG Editor is able to format the USB automatically.
Step 1: Right-click the software icon on desktop and select 'Run as Administrator' from the contextual menu. Choose 'Run' when prompted.
Step 2: Insert your formatted USB drive, and click 'Burn' tab on the main screen.
Step 3: Click 'Browse' button to import macOS dmg file into the program. And select the USB drive name from the second row. You can also set a volume labe for that USB drive.
Step 4: Click 'Burn' button at the bottom to start the process. You will see a progress bar and wait around 10 minutes to get it done.
Step 5: Once the progress bar is at 100%, a bootable macOS USB is ready. After that, you can use that USB drive for installing macOS.
This is one of the easiest way to create a bootable macOS USB on a Windows PC. The steps are simple and instructions are pretty clear.
Part 3: Format USB Drive to GPT If Failed
If the USB drive created in above step was not seen as a bootable device on your Mac, then you need to take an addtional step before burning. That's formatting the USB to GPT.
Mostly, the USB drive was formmated to FAT32 in default when being shipped out from the factory. However, FAT32 can be only used for installing OS with legacy BISO, which doesn't work for macOS. So the next step is to format your USB drive in the GPT partition style in order to burn installation files to the desired USB drive. You can do this in Command Prompt as admin. In elevated Command Prompt (Ctrl+Shift+Enter), input the following series of commands followed by Enter after each line:
Diskpart
List disk
Select Disk X (X stands for the USB drive name that appears after the previous command)
Clean
Convert GPT
Create partition primary
Part 4: Boot Mac from macOS USB Drive for Installation
Now remove the USB drive and insert it into the Mac computer. To boot from the disk, you need to hold down the option key when you hear the boot chime. This will take you to the Startup Disk Manager, where you should be able to see the USB drive. It might have a different name, but as long as it is bootable, you'll be able to see it there. Once you select it, the computer will boot from the disk and the macOS installation will begin.
Troubleshooting
Flashing Error: You might receive a flashing error message at the end of burning process. Please don'y worry and ignore this error. The USB becomes a bootable disk and you can use it to install macOS even this error pops up.
About Official EI Capitan DMG: There has a serious bug in the official release of OS X El Capitan, which contains .pkg installer only. The burning process will fail for sure. Please use this modified EI Capitan DMG file instead, which was approved a good option.
Os X 10.11 El Capitan Bootable Usb
Registration Failed: Please make sure the computer is connected to Internet and no proxy or VPB is running during registration. If the problem still exists, please send an email to support team asking for a new code.
Conclusion
The whole process might look a bit complicated if this is your first time, but just follow the instructions in this article and you should be fine. That being said, you need to be careful when downloading the DMG file and formatting your USB drive. If you don't do these two steps correctly, the output drive from the UUByte DMG Editor software won't be bootable, which means you can't install macOS from that USB drive, and you may need to do the whole thing over again.