How To Make Bootable Usb For Mac

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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.

Create Bootable USB for Mac on Windows 10, Mac and Windows file system is completely different, so you are not able to create bootable USB for Mac with PowerShell, CMD or Rufus.If you remembered, till MacOS sierra the Apple file system was Hackintosh, but MacOS 10.13 High Sierra has the technology of Apple Filesystem. That’s why we can’t create bootable USB with. Jesus Vigo goes over the steps to create a bootable USB to install OS X 10.7-10.8 and OS X 10.5-10.6, as well as how to put multiple versions on the same USB.

Download macOS

For

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.

Use the 'createinstallmedia' command in Terminal

  1. Connect the USB flash drive or other volume that you're using for the bootable installer. Make sure that it has at least 12GB of available storage and is formatted as Mac OS Extended.
  2. Open Terminal, which is in the Utilities folder of your Applications folder.
  3. Type or paste one of the following commands in Terminal. These assume that the installer is still in your Applications folder, and MyVolume is the name of the USB flash drive or other volume you're using. If it has a different name, replace MyVolume in these commands with the name of your volume.
    Catalina:*
    Mojave:*

    High Sierra:*
    El Capitan:
  4. Press Return after typing the command.
  5. When prompted, type your administrator password and press Return again. Terminal doesn't show any characters as you type your password.
  6. When prompted, type Y to confirm that you want to erase the volume, then press Return. Terminal shows the progress as the bootable installer is created.
  7. When Terminal says that it's done, the volume will have the same name as the installer you downloaded, such as Install macOS Catalina. You can now quit Terminal and eject the volume.

* 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.

Use the bootable installer

After creating the bootable installer, follow these steps to use it:

  1. Plug the bootable installer into a compatible Mac.
  2. Use Startup Manager or Startup Disk preferences to select the bootable installer as the startup disk, then start up from it. Your Mac will start up to macOS Recovery.
    Learn about selecting a startup disk, including what to do if your Mac doesn't start up from it.
  3. Choose your language, if prompted.
  4. A bootable installer doesn't download macOS from the Internet, but it does require the Internet to get information specific to your Mac model, such as firmware updates. If you need to connect to a Wi-Fi network, use the Wi-Fi menu in the menu bar.
  5. 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:

Catalina:

Bootable

Mojave:

High Sierra:

El Capitan:

If you’re using both Windows and macOS, you’ve to deal with when mac refuses to boot. The reason behind can be from a number of things that could go wrong. This includes system failure, bad updates, power failure, hardware failure. Unless there is a hardware problem that only can be diagnosed at the apple center you can fix your Apple computer.

It is an excellent practice always to have a bootable macOS USB, which you can easily create using macOS operating system. But since we’re here, you probably can want to make bootable USB using Windows 10. Let’s be real, and there are more Windows computers compared to MAC. Fortunately, you can use a Windows computer to create a bootable USB flash drive.

In this article, we’ll help you with the instructions to create a bootable MacOS USB installation media from a Windows 10 computer. So that you can use that USB to install or reinstall (upgrade) Apple’s MacOS. You can create a macos Catalina/sierra bootable USB using this guide to fix your operating system.

What’s needed?

You will need a few things before you get started. The first essential thing in it is a USB drive would be awesome if you use a USB 3.0, but you can get the work done using slow USB as well. So, in contrast, you need these following things.

  1. One high-quality USB flash drive with 16GB of storage.
  2. TransMac software.
  3. MacOS operating system image (DMG file).

How to Create a macos Catalina bootable usb

The guide is simple and straightforward if you follow thiese step.

Download and install TransMac on your Windows PC. It’s paid software with 15-day trial, so you can use it within the time to create a bootable MacOS USB flash drive. If you like the software and to support the developer you can buy the full version.

Plug the USB drive to your Windows computer that you’ll be using to fix your MacOS. And we are going to tell you something straightforward – backup if things stored in USB Drive.

Step 1. Open the TransMac, and select Run as administrator. If you’re using the trial version, wait 15 seconds, and click Run.

Step 2. Use your USB drive right-click on it and select format disk format this will format the USB drive so that it can be used to store the Mac OS operating system. One thing you need took care of that the USB drive needs in GPT partition in order to work on a Mac computer otherwise it won’t boot.

When it prompts select a name for your USB it doesn’t matter but just do it and click ok. If the formatting completed successfully, click OK to continue.

Step 3. Again from the left sidebar right-click on the USB drive and select restore with disk image.

Step 4. Now browse to the location where the Mac OS system image file is located and click ok to load it.

How to make bootable usb for mac os x

How To Make Bootable Usb For Macbook Pro

Step 5. Click Yes to create the macOS USB bootable media.

It will take a few minutes to complete the process because the Mac Operating System is larger than any other operating systems like Windows and LINUX in size. Now plug the USB drive to Mac computer in order to install, install or upgrade the operating system to the latest version of Mac OS, which can be Sierra or later.

THE TOOL CAN

How To Make Bootable Usb For Mac El Capitan

  • Apple File System (APFS) volume read support.
  • Open Mac APFS/HFS/HFS+ format disk drives, flash drives, CD/DVD/Blu-ray media, HD floppies, dmg, dmgpart, sparsebundle and sparseimage files.
  • Copy files to Mac HFS+ disks and dmg images.
    Format as HFS+ for Mac .
  • Save and restore images of disks and flash drives.
  • Create, compress, expand and split dmg files.
  • Built in burner functionality to burn ISO and dmg files directly to CD/DVD/Blu-Ray.
  • Read Mac multisession and hybrid CDs.
  • View partition layout.

How to create a GPT partition on a USB flash drive

How To Make Bootable Usb For Mac Using Windows

If the USB flash drive is not working using TransMac, it could be still a partition problem. In this case, you want to redo the entire process again, but this time use the following steps to use the Diskpart command-line utility on Windows to create the appropriate GPT partition.

Make
  1. Open Command Prompt as an administrator. Type cmd in run dialog or open it from the start menu.
  2. Type the diskpart command and press Enter. This will display that is connected to your computer.
  3. Enter the list disk command to view all drives connected to your computer and press Enter. This command will show all of the partitions inside of a disc.
  4. Type the select disk command followed the number assigned for the USB flash drive (e.g., select disk 4), and press Enter. This command will select the disc partition of your choice.
  5. Enter the clean command and press Enter. This erases and formats the disc.
  6. Type the convert GPT command and press Enter. This convert master boot record to new GPT.
  7. Enter the create partition primary command and press Enter to complete the process.

Quickly create a macOS bootable USB on Windows

Now make bootable USB using the TransMac software (follow instructions that are given above). Now connect the USB and power on your Mac computer while holding the option key and then select the USB Flash media to run the installation.

Learn using USB on MAC (Apple support page)

Learn more about making bootable USB.

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