Ever since the release of Mac OS Lion the software upgrades for Macintosh computers are distributed through the online app store. Be it a clean install or upgrade, mac app store require you connect to the internet to download whole installation files. The online OS update is okay if you have stable broadband connectivity and enough bandwidth. Apple also provides an option for internet recovery of macOS if your computer fails to boot. But there are situations where you can’t download the OS from the Apple servers. Having a bootable macOS offline installation disk is the only solution in such scenarios.
May 29, 2020 Clean installing or restoring a Mac offline with USB pen drive. As said earlier, you could use the macOS USB installer to do a clean install or restore it upon a boot failure. Just connect the USB disk and press the Option/Alt Key when you hear the boot sound. The Mac will then display all. Nov 17, 2019 Boot Mac from USB Option l: Startup Manager If your Mac won't boot up normally, you can set it to boot from a different drive, such as a USB stick containing macOS installation files in bootable format. The drive will have to contain a version of the OS that is compatible with the Mac. Because of this, I recommend creating your own bootable El Capitan (OS X 10.11) installer drive on an external hard drive or USB thumb drive. If you need to install El Capitan on multiple Macs. Jun 14, 2020 Holding the 'alt' (option) key should open Apple's native boot menu. That should list available drives to boot from.
How to make a macOS bootable USB installer
It is possible to create a backup macOS installer on a DVD or USB drive but later is the best choice. Most of the Macs these days don’t have DVD slots, and the installation through a disc is very slow. Hence we discuss only about making macOS recovery installer on a USB disc. For this you need a Mac and a USB pen drive of at least 8 GB space, and a third-party app called DiskMaker.
Boot From Usb Drive Mac
- First, download a copy of Disk Maker from the official website.
- Choose a version as per your requirement. For example, if you want make USB installer for macOS Catalina 10.15, download Disk Maker X 9.
- I use an MacBook Pro with High Sierra. Hence, I’m downloading disk maker X 7.
- The next step is to download full macOS installer from the App Store to your Applications folder.
- Run Disk Maker DMG installer and copy the app to the Applications.
- The application will automatically detect the downloaded macOS as shown in the screenshot. Select “Use this Copy” if you would like to proceed with it.
- Next is setting the USB pen drive for creating the bootable installer. Choose the third option ” An 8 GB USB Thumb drive.”
- The app will list all drives in your system. Pick the one you would like use as macOS USB installer.
- Ignore the warning message and proceed to Erase and Create macOS USB disk. Don’t forget to provide your admin password when it prompts.
- Keep checking notifications tab for progress. When it completes you will find Install macOS Mojave (or High Sierra) mounted to your desktop as a USB disk.
- That’s your backup. Unmount and keep the USB installer to a safe place.
What is the alternative if I don’t have usable Mac at the moment?
This method is applicable when you have a Mac, and the internet recovery fails. But think about a situation when your only Mac stops to boot, and you don’t have USB installer or TimeMachine backup! Downloading Mac OS DMG file might save you. If you have a macOS DMG, you can create bootable USB disk from a Windows PC — use a software like TransMac for this purpose.
Clean installing or restoring a Mac offline with USB pen drive
As said earlier, you could use the macOS USB installer to do a clean install or restore it upon a boot failure. Just connect the USB disk and press the Option/Alt Key when you hear the boot sound. The Mac will then display all the startup disks available.
Pick the USB drive with the label “Install macOS Mojave or High Sierra” and follow on-screen instructions to complete the installation. If you need, use the Disk Utility to format the drive for doing a clean install.
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.
- One high-quality USB flash drive with 16GB of storage.
- TransMac software.
- 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.
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
- 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
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.
- Open Command Prompt as an administrator. Type cmd in run dialog or open it from the start menu.
- Type the diskpart command and press Enter. This will display that is connected to your computer.
- 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.
- 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.
- Enter the clean command and press Enter. This erases and formats the disc.
- Type the convert GPT command and press Enter. This convert master boot record to new GPT.
- 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)
Mac Os Install Usb Boot Drive
Learn more about making bootable USB.
Boot Osx From Usb Drive
Contents