Mac Os X Install Flash Drive

Apple Mac OS X Lion is now available to general public. The Mac OS X 10.7 Lion is available for installation only from the Mac App Store. This guide will teach you how to create a bootable USB Flash drive of Mac OS X Lion 10.7 and install Lion from USB, rather than downloading it from Mac App Store on each and every Mac computer you own.

  1. How To Install Macos On Flash Drive
  2. Install Mac Os From Usb Drive
  3. Install Mac Os From Usb
  4. Mac Os X Install Flash Drive Windows 10

Despite of numerous great and awesome features, Mac OSX Lion 10.7 has a big flaw that it is not available in bootable USB or DVD right now. Every time you you want to install OSX Lion on a Mac you will need to download it from Mac App Store all over again. Thanks to the bootable USB method which eliminates the downloading of Mac OS X Lion for each and every device and lets you install Mac OS X Lion on any Mac.

Oct 04, 2015  As usual, Apple no longer supply a bootable USB Flash Drive with latest OS X releases - including the new OS X 10.11 El Capitan. Using this tutorial you will be able to create your very own.

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Note: An official bootable USB of Mac OSX ion 10.7 will be available in August 2011 for $69. This method not only eliminates the wait for the official, it also saves you $40 (Mac App Store version costs $29).

Download the version of macOS you want to install. Unless you have a specific reason to install an older version of macOS, you can download the most recent installer from Apple.Look for the installers labeled “Combo Update” which contain the full installer. When its done, you can insert that drive into any Mac and launch the installer by holding Option when you boot the computer. Besides installing Yosemite, this drive will have a couple handy. Mar 06, 2017  This will walk you through how to install macOS on a USB drive in three steps. The flash drive must be at least 8GB+ in size in order to fit the macOS installer on it. To make a flash drive installer you need a Mac or a Windows/Linux machine running Mac OS in a virtual machine. Intel: Sierra VM Ryzen: Sierra VM STEP 1: Downloading macOS Open App Store Click Store then Login from the menu bar. Apple will be releasing a flash drive installer for a whopping $70 in August, but you don't need to wait (or pay twice the OS's price) to get it. It's very easy to burn Apple's installer to a. Mar 12, 2020  Select Install macOS (or Install OS X) from the Utilities window, then click Continue and follow the onscreen instructions. Learn more 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 this path in Terminal. Dec 08, 2016  Install OS X El Capitan.app Install OS X Sierra.app Install OS X Mojave.app Command for the terminal to create your USB stick: IMPORTANT: Remember to modify it.

Creating a bootable Mac OS X Lion 10.7 USB Flash drives requires medium level Mac knowledge, however, by following these simple instructions even a beginner should be able to install Mac OS X Lion via USB Flash Drive.

Why make a bootable Lion USB drive?

  • You can perform a clean OS X Lion installation with the bootable USB drive
  • The bootable Lion USB drive becomes a recovery disk with Disk Utility access, access to Time Machine backups, re-installation, and all other Recovery HD partition features
  • You will have external media to recover and reinstall Lion in the event of total drive failure or some other catastrophe

Required Stuff

  • Purchase and Download Mac OS X Lion from the App Store
  • 4GB USB Flash drive (8GB recommended)

If you have arranged the above mentioned items, simply follow the detailed guide below to create a bootable Mac OS X Lion 10.7 USB Flash Drive…

Step 1 – Locate the Lion InstallESD.dmg file

Once the Lion downloading is complete, go to the Applications folder and find the Install Mac OS X Lion.app file you just downloaded;
Right click on the Install Mac OS X Lion.app file and select Show Package Contents;


Now go to Contents > SharedSupport directory. Locate the file named: InstallESD.dmg and copy it on your desktop.

Step 2 – Format The USB

  1. Before formatting, If you have any data on your USB drive then save it;
  2. Plug the USB flash drive into your Mac;
  3. Launch Disk Utility from Applications;
  4. Select the plugged USB from the Left pane on the Disk Utility and click on Partition tab;
  5. Select 1 Partition from the Volume Scheme dropdown menu;
  6. Input a name for the USB and Choose Mac OS Extended (Journaled);
  7. Now click on Options button at the bottom. Select GUID Partition Table and click OK. Now click on Apply at the bottom right to start formatting.

Step 3 – Make Mac OS X Lion Bootable USB

  1. Double-click on InstallESD.dmg (that you copied onto your Mac desktop) to mount the Lion disk image (mounted InstallESD.dmg should appear on Disk Utility application and desktop);
  2. Select the plugged USB from the Left pane on the Disk Utility and then go to Restore tab;
  3. Click and drag the IMac OS X Install ESD from the left pane and drop it in the Source field;
  4. Then Click and Drag the USB drive from the left pane and drop it in the Destination field;
  5. Make sure you have chosen the right USB drive, you don’t want to format the wrong drive and then click on Restore button;
  6. This will restore the Lion 10.7 image to the USB Flash drive. Wait for the process to complete.

Step 4 – Boot Mac OS X Lion from USB

  1. Reboot your Mac with the USB drive plugged in.
  2. Hold down the alt/Option key on your keyboard when you hear the OS X start-up sound.
  3. Choose the USB Flash Drive from there to boot.
  4. Now follow the on screen instructions to install OS X Lion.

You can follow the Step 4 to install Lion on other Macs with the bootable USB you just created.

[via Lifehacker]

Related Content

To perform a clean installation of macOS Sierra (basically, Mac OS X 10.12), I recommend using a bootable USB flash drive containing the macOS Sierra installer. Below are the steps I took to create the bootable USB flash drive and how I used it to install macOS Sierra.

Note: The macOS Sierra Disk Utility and installer appears to be more buggy and much slower than previous versions. The best advice for installing macOS Sierra is to try again and be very patient (if you expect an operation to complete in 5 minutes, then give it at least 50 minutes).

Download macOS Sierra Installer

The macOS Sierra installer is available from the Mac App Store. Run the “App Store” application, search for “macOS Sierra”, and download it. It will save the installer as an “/Applications/Install macOS Sierra.app” file (about 4.97GB in size).

Note: If you run the macOS Sierra installer to upgrade your Mac, the downloaded file will be deleted automatically after the upgrade is completed. To keep that file, you will want to move it out of the Applications folder so it won’t be deleted after an upgrade. Launch the “Terminal” application and run this command to move the downloaded installer to your user’s “Downloads” folder:

sudomv/Applications/Install macOS Sierra.app/ ~/Downloads/

If you are paranoid (doesn’t hurt), you can verify that the installer file was downloaded correctly by verify its checksum. Run the “Terminal” application and this command:

hdiutil verify /Applications/Install macOS Sierra.app/Contents/SharedSupport/InstallESD.dmg
# If successful, the last output line should read:
# hdiutil: verify: checksum of '/Applications/Install macOS Sierra.app/Contents/SharedSupport/InstallESD.dmg' is VALID

Format USB Flash Drive

The macOS Sierra installer takes up 5.1GB of space on the USB flash drive, so you will need a flash drive with a capacity of 8GB or greater.

Note: If the flash drive is mounted under “/Volumes” successfully when you plug it in, you can skip the following steps to reformat the flash drive. This is because the script we run to create the bootable drive will reformat the flash drive as an initial step. Because I am paranoid, I recommend reformatting the USB flash drive manually anyhow.

Format the USB flash drive using these steps:

  1. Plug the USB flash drive into your Mac.
  2. Launch the “Disk Utility” application.
  3. On the left-hand pane, select the USB drive (not the partition under it, if any).
  4. Click on the “Erase” tab (or button at the top).
    1. Input a name like “Sierra” (this name will be overwritten later).
    2. Select “Mac OS Extended (Journaled)” for “Format”.
    3. Select “Master Boot Record” for “Scheme”.
    4. Click the “Erase…” button at the bottom. Click the “Erase” button in the warning popup dialog if you get one.
      • The format operation may take several minutes to complete. (USB 2.0 and large capacity drives will take longer.) After the format completes, the partition will be mounted under “/Volumes/Sierra” (or whatever name you selected above).
      • Note: Under macOS Sierra, the Erase function will fail if the USB drive’s partition is mounted. You can manually unmount the partition before running Erase. Or you can run Erase twice; the first time will unmount the partition and fail, and the second time will actually do the format (which will succeed).
  5. Close the “Disk Utility” application.

Create Bootable USB Flash Drive Installer

To create the bootable USB macOS Sierra installer, run the “Terminal” application and this command:

# The --volume value is the mounted USB flash drive partition; in this case, named /Volumes/Sierra
sudo/Applications/Install macOS Sierra.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume/Volumes/Sierra --applicationpath/Applications/Install macOS Sierra.app --nointeraction
# You will be prompted for your user's administrative password.

How To Install Macos On Flash Drive

Update: For macOS 10.14 Mojave (and its predecessor, macOS 10.13 High Sierra), the createinstallmedia command no longer requires the “–applicationpath” and “–nointeraction” flags, so omit them. The command becomes just “createinstallmedia –volume /Volumes/Mojave”.

Note: If the createinstallmedia command returns a “Failed to start erase of disk due to error (-9999, 0)” error, then your current Mac OS X version does not fully support the createinstallmedia tool. Instead, create the USB installation drive manually using instructions from Bootable USB Flash Drive to Install Mac OS X 10.10 Yosemite.

The “createinstallmedia” program will erase the USB flash drive, create a new partition named “Install macOS Sierra”, and copy the installation files to that partition. The output will look like:

Erasing Disk: 0%... 10%... 20%... 30%...100%...
Copying installer files to disk...
Copy complete.
Making disk bootable...
Copying boot files...
Copy complete.
Done.

The program will pause at the “Copying installer files to disk…” output line above. This step took 20-30 minutes with my Kingston 16GB USB 2.0 flash drive. Yours may take a shorter or longer time. I recommend giving it at least an hour, maybe two, before giving up.

Note: Mac hardware is very finicky about USB flash drives. Initially, I used a Corsair 32GB USB 3.0 drive; however, when I held down the Option key to try to boot with it, the Mac would freeze with a black startup screen. The Kingston 16GB USB 2.0 drive did not have this problem. So if you enounter issues (when erasing and copying) or weirdness (when booting), consider changing to another brand of USB flash drive. If you don’t have another drive, consider at least testing the flash drive to make sure it is not bad or corrupted (“First Aid” in “Disk Utility” is the minimum; google for more powerful tools).

Boot With USB Flash Drive

Note: I recommending connecting the Mac to its AC power adapter before beginning the macOS Sierra installation. The installation may take a long time (an hour or more) and you don’t want the battery to die in the middle.

To boot a Mac with the USB flash drive:

  1. Shutdown the Mac.
  2. Insert the USB flash drive.
  3. While holding the “option/alt” key down, turn on the Mac to display the boot Startup Manager.
  4. You should see one or more icons, one of which should be called “Install macOS Sierra” for the USB flash drive. (The internal hard drive may not be visible if it does not have a valid, bootable partition installed.)
    • Note: If you don’t see the USB flash drive’s “Install macOS Sierra”, try removing and re-inserting the USB flash drive while viewing the Startup Manager screen. The USB flash drive should then appear after a few seconds.
  5. Select the “Install macOS Sierra” (with left/right arrow keys) and hit the “return/enter” key to boot from the USB flash drive.

Install Mac Os From Usb Drive

It may take 5-10 minutes or longer to load the installer from the USB flash drive. Sometimes the progress bar may appear to be frozen… just be patient. I would give it at least 30-60 minutes to load before giving up.

Windows

Format the Hard Drive

When the installer finishes loading, you will see a “macOS Utilities” window appear. Do the following to format the internal hard drive:

  1. Click on the “Disk Utility” option and click the “Continue” button on the bottom to launch the “Disk Utility” application.
  2. On the left-hand pane, select the hard drive (not the partition under it, if any).
  3. Click on the “Erase” button at the top.
    1. Input a name like “macOS”.
    2. Select “Mac OS Extended (Journaled)” for “Format”.
    3. Select “GUID Partition Map” for “Scheme”.
    4. Click the “Erase…” button at the bottom.
      • For SSD (Solid State Drive), the format operation may take less than a minute to complete. For mechanical hard drive, it may several minutes to hours, depending upon the size, speed, and condition of your hard drive.
      • Note: Again, the Erase function will fail if the hard drive’s partition is mounted. You can manually unmount the partition before running Erase. Or you can run Erase twice; the first time will unmount the partition and fail, and the second time will actually do the format (which will succeed).
  4. Close the “Disk Utility” application.

Note: Now and then, I noticed the output of the Erase seems to erroneously double the size of the hard drive. For a 128GB hard drive, the graph shows 120.88GB macOS (in blue) and 120.37 GB Unformatted (in red). I think it is just a user interface bug because when I close Disk Utility and re-open it, the graph then only shows the 120.88GB macOS (in blue).

Install macOS Sierra

Back at the “macOS Utilities” window, do the following to begin the macOS Sierra installation process:

  1. Click on the “Install macOS” option and click the “Continue” button.
  2. The “macOS Sierra” installer’s splash screen will appear. Click the “Continue” button.
  3. Click on the “Agree” button to agree to the license. A popup confirmation window will appear; click on the popup’s “Agree” button.
  4. Select the hard drive and click the “Install” button.

Note: You may encounter strange hardware behavior. On my 13 inch Macbook Pro Retina, the macOS Sierra installer turned the fan on to maximum for the whole duration of the installation. Thankfully, once it finished and rebooted, the fan turned off and stayed off.

The macOS Sierra installer tries to be helpful by telling you how long it will take. Unfortunately, it lies. You should take whatever remaining time it tells you and multiple by 10 (for minutes) or 100 (for seconds). If it says “6 minutes remaining”, that could mean 60 minutes or one hour remaining. Worse, if it says “6 seconds remaining”, you may be staring at that message for 600 seconds or one hour.

The best solution is to be patient. Go grab a bite to eat and watch a movie. Take a long nap or better yet, sleep your 8 hours. I would wait at least 4 hours before giving up.

Note: You can display the installer’s log window (using the menu or pressing Cmd+L). I didn’t find this helpful at all. Even for a successful install, numerous errors are logged; I don’t know what is a critical or non-critical error. And often, you won’t see a progress/status log output for a long time, easily 20-30 minutes. Not seeing any new log statements does not mean that the installer froze. So the logs didn’t do anything for me.

What Does Giving Up Mean?

Giving up means you have accepted defeat. The next step is to retreat and try again. Some suggestions on how to proceed:

Install Mac Os From Usb

  • Reset your Mac by doing the following:
    1. Reset the SMC (see step 3 under the “Reset the SMC on Mac notebook computers” section).
    2. Reset the NVRAM (aka PRAM).
    3. Run the Apple Hardware Diagnostic or Test to make sure you don’t have a hardware failure.
    4. Finally, retry the macOS Sierra install.
  • Use a different USB port on the Mac.
  • Use another brand of USB flash drive.
  • Delete and re-download the macOS Sierra installer (especially if you downloaded it a long while ago). Even if the checksum is okay, you may want to re-download in case there is a newer version of the installer with a bug fix for your very problem.
  • Download an older Mac OS X version, say Mac OS X 10.11 El Capitan, install that, and then upgrade to macOS Sierra. If you know the Mac OS X version which came with your Mac originally, consider downloading (if you still have access) and installing that version first.
  • Use the Mac Recovery System to download and install the original OS version that came with your Mac. Then upgrade from that to macOS Sierra.
  • Buy a more recent model Mac (at most a couple of years old). It may be that your current Mac is too old or slow to support macOS Sierra. It’s okay to keep running an old Mac OS version. (For example, if I had a Core 2 Duo Mac, I would not run anything later than Mac OS X 10.9 Mavericks on it.)

Hopefully, this post will help you to do a fresh installation of macOS Sierra.

Mac Os X Install Flash Drive Windows 10

Some info above taken from: