Putting a Bootable Lion Installation on a Flash Drive. This process has a few steps. First, make sure your USB drive is formatted for use with a Mac, then download the OS X Lion installer from the App Store and copy it to your flash drive. Finally, use your bootable flash drive to install Lion on your Mac. These instructions will also work for other suitable bootable devices, including an external drive or internal drive, but we'll assume you're using a USB flash drive. Finally, you will need a Mac that meets the OS X El Capitan minimum requirements. MacDrive also includes powerful features that enable you to create and partition Mac disks direct from your PC. And in the event that your Mac disks is having a problem, our robust repair feature can fix basic disk issues. From floppies to hard drives, MacDrive can handle almost any disk you toss at it.
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.
Find the appropriate download link in the upgrade instructions for each macOS version:
macOS Catalina, macOS Mojave, ormacOS High Sierra
Installers for each of these macOS versions download directly to your Applications folder as an app named Install macOS Catalina, Install macOS Mojave, or Install macOS High Sierra. If the installer opens after downloading, quit it without continuing installation. Important: To get the correct installer, download from a Mac that is using macOS Sierra 10.12.5 or later, or El Capitan 10.11.6. Enterprise administrators, please download from Apple, not a locally hosted software-update server.
OS X El Capitan
El Capitan downloads as a disk image. On a Mac that is compatible with El Capitan, open the disk image and run the installer within, named InstallMacOSX.pkg. It installs an app named Install OS X El Capitan into your Applications folder. You will create the bootable installer from this app, not from the disk image or .pkg installer.
MyVolume
in these commands with the name of your volume.Y
to confirm that you want to erase the volume, then press Return. Terminal shows the progress as the bootable installer is created. * If your Mac is using macOS Sierra or earlier, include the --applicationpath
argument, similar to the way this argument is used in the command for El Capitan.
After creating the bootable installer, follow these steps to use it:
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:
Catalina:
Mojave:
High Sierra:
El Capitan: