Hi all,

I've been reading the threads on installing El Cap and thought this might come in handy for some of you. I recently got a copy of Yosemite from the App store as suggested here earlier, and started searching for a way to store it for future use.
I found this at OSX Daily and it worked for me to make the Yosemite install disc on a USB flash drive, something I'd never done before.

Yosemite instructions

For the El Cap instructions go here.


The step by step instructions are very clearly laid out and include the extremely important steps for correctly formatting your USB flash drive so that it will be bootable. The instructions involve using Terminal (copy-paste works fine), or if you are not comfortable in Terminal, go to

DiskMaker X

and download a copy of their installer maker (donationware). This does it all with a graphical interface.


Very important! You must correctly format your flash drive as per the instructions, before using the terminal commands, or it won't be bootable.

Good luck!

Erasing Disk: 0%… 10%… 20%… 30%…100%…

I had this sequence happen every time I make a USB installed, and I wonder why we never see 40, 50...90%? who decided to skip from 30 to 100?

What are the advantages of having a bootable installer on your USB flash drive rather than just running the installer from the flash drive?

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richorlin

Quote
richorlin
What are the advantages of having a bootable installer on your USB flash drive rather than just running the installer from the flash drive?

The latter requires having booted from the target disc ?

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RElup,

There is an easier way to create an installation flash drive. No special steps or terminal required.

1. Choose a fast USB 3.0 drive with appropriate capacity. I currently use SanDisk Extreme 32gb drives

2. Reformat drive as a standard Mac volume. Give it an appropriate name, i.e. El Cap Installer

3. Power up the OS installer and through the normal installation process for installing the OS onto an external drive.

Once the OS is installed on the drive. I make sure to download or copy the installer onto it. I also install a couple of handy disk utilities such as Drive Genius and Smart Utility.

I prefer the flexibility of this method since it results in a normal, bootable drive. That it happens to be on a flash drive is a bonus.

I've done this for Yosemite, Mavericks, Mountain Lion, Lion and Snow Leopard. In fact, I just used the Snow Leopard boot drive to create another Snow Leopard drive because I needed to use a particular app that wouldn't run under Yosemite. I used the Snow Leopard drive because it was the installer I had handy at the moment. Worked like a charm.

Note: I have not done this for El Capitan yet. I've no doubt the method will work just as well for El Cap as it has done for other versions of the OS.

Interesting side note:. I booted my office's Mac Pro which has Yosemite with the Snow Leopard drive. Once booted off the flash drive, the system did not see the drives in the tower. I suspect this is because of how Apple changed the way drives are formatted in the newer versions of the OS.

Robert

I got a 500GB 2.5" drive in a used Mac a while ago. Had no use for it in that machine, so I turned it into a rescue disk: partitioned it and installed four OSes with some rescue utilities on each. Popped it into one of those clear OWC enclosures. Last year I made a rescue drive for a friend, using a 32GB Flash drive. I'll probably make one for myself at some point, although with the number of bootable externals I have, it's not urgent. I do take the extra step of creating 8GB flash drive installer backups for each OS version, as well as keeping the installer apps backed up in multiple locations on HDs.

I agree that having a small rescue drive handy is always a good idea. As long as you don't forget where you put it...

Quote
Robert M
RElup,

There is an easier way to create an installation flash drive. No special steps or terminal required.

...

Robert

That is not an Installer. That is a full blown install. It is more useful, you need more space though, and I am not sure if the install is pretty universal or if it has some machine specific code. It may be that drivers are not the correct version when booting to another Mac. But as long as you can boot, and run Disk Utility, and Install the OS, who cares if the graphics cards drivers for example are the proper version or not? it is a one time affair, an after that you boot into the new install anyway.

Space,

Correct. Full blown install. Not an issue using the same drive for an '08 Mac Pro, '09 Macbook Pro 13", '08 Macbook 13", '10 Macbook Pro 17". FWIW, you'd think Apple would have a utility that makes it easy to create installation flash drives. Or, build the functionality into Disk Utility.

Robert



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/02/2015 06:07PM by Robert M.

Quote
Robert M
Space,

Correct. Full blown install. Not an issue using the same drive for an '08 Mac Pro, '09 Macbook Pro 13", '08 Macbook 13", '10 Macbook Pro 17". FWIW, you'd think Apple would have a utility that makes it easy to create installation flash drives. Or, build the functionality into Disk Utility.

Robert

another thing: this obviously reuqires more space, but most importantly, it requires you to make at leats a user account (even it it is the administrator). You need to decide if you need to use a password, and somehow to keep track of it. Even if you skip the log in screen and log in automatically in that account, you still need that password when you run the Install OS X ___ App. You could write it down in a file on the Desktop for example.

A true installed like the one discussed in this thread requires less space and no need for such password.

Both methods have their strengths.

Followed Robert M's method, now have a fully bootable Capitan and installer on a 32GB flash drive ready for action.


Boot'em Capitan!

You could write it down in a file on the Desktop for example.

True.

Or just make it part of the label on the stick. It's duty cycle, in theory would be limited to just making a new Install, which would have it's own separate security.

I made an "installer" using Robert's method on a SanDisk Extreme 32G USB3 drive. It used about 20G of that drive.

As it turns out, it's fast. There's no lag in basic operations. I wouldn't try to render a movie, but it's a far cry from my experience putting Mavs on a USB2 drive and booting my former 24" Al iMac.

As I'm mentioned in another post, one odd thing is that the drive doesn't appear in the sidebar with all the other devices. This isn't a big deal, at least, it hasn't been yet. I just can't move back and forth between it and another destination as easily. I had to go back to the desktop icon in most cases.

I think this is because SanDisk made these as "non-removable" drives. I don't know if that's still the case.

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