There are many ways that you can create a bootable Mavericks USB Drive but this seems to me the far easiest way to do so. In this article I will assume that you already have a reasonable grasp of the OSX system and cut out the lengthy text: 1. Download Yosemite from the Apple Store. Yosemite can be downloaded directly from Apple Store here.
Update: Go to Install macOS Sierra Using Bootable USB Flash Drive if you want to install macOS 10.12 Sierra instead.
Update 2: The instructions below will work to manually create a Mac OS X 10.11 El Capitan USB installation drive. I needed to upgrade my sister’s 2008 Macbook Pro and found that the existing Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard did not support the “createinstallmedia” tool; I got a “Failed to start erase of disk due to error (-9999, 0)” error. I followed the instructions below to successfully create a bootable installer for Mac OS X 10.11 El Capitan, which is the last version to support the 2008 Core 2 Duo Macbook Pro.
Step 1: Download Hackintosh OS X 10.10.1 Yosemite.ISO File for Windows. Direct Link Torrent Link Torrent Link 2 (Build: 14B25) (Standalone Setup Installer) Step 2: Mount the Hackintosh ISO Image File i.e. Step 3: Install R-Drive (in the hand). Step 4: Now expand the image 10.10.1.usb.arc to any Bootable USB. If you succeed in downloading the OS installation, your next step is to create a bootable USB or DVD and then reinstall the OS on your computer. How to download older Mac OS X versions via the App Store. If you once had purchased an old version of Mac OS X from the App Store, open it and go to the Purchased tab.
In this post, I will go over instructions on how to create a bootable USB flash drive containing the Mac OS X 10.10 Yosemite installer. These instructions will also work for Mac OS X 10.9 Mavericks (excluding a Yosemite-specific step) and differ significantly from the instructions for creating a Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard installer. You will need an 8GB USB flash drive for Mac OS X Yosemite or Mavericks.
I tried several methods which failed to create a bootable USB flash drive before finding one that succeeded. The instructions I found that worked, using Disk Utility, were located at How to Make a Bootable OS X Mavericks USB Install Drive and How to Create a Bootable Install USB Drive of Mac OS X 10.10 Yosemite.
Download Os X Yosemite Bootable Usb File
Download the Mac OS X 10.10 Yosemite
First, download the latest Mac OS X version, which is 10.10 Yosemite. It is the version currently available for download from the “App Store”. (If you want an earlier version like Mac OS X 10.9 Mavericks, you’ll need to get it from elsewhere.)
Launch “App Store” and search for “OS X Yosemite”. Download it. (It is 5.16GB in size.)
Note: If you run the Yosemite installer to upgrade your Mac, the downloaded installer 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” app and run this command to move the downloaded installer app to your user’s “Downloads” folder:
Create Bootable USB Flash Drive Installer
By default, the Finder will hide system files which we will need to see. Run these commands in the “Terminal” app to expose the hidden files:
defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE
# Close all Finder instances (and re-launch so settings take effect).
killall Finder
Prepare the USB flash drive:
Download Os X Yosemite Free
- Plug in a USB flash drive of size 8GB or larger.
- Launch the “Disk Utility” to format the USB Flash drive.
- On the left-hand pane, select the USB drive (not the partition under it, if any).
- Click on the “Erase” tab, select “Mac OS Extended (Journaled)” for “Format” and input a name like “Install Yosemite” (or anything because this name will be overwritten later).
- Click the “Erase…” button at the bottom and then the “Erase” button in the popup dialog. This format operation should take less than a minute to complete.
Restore the Yosemite installation image to the USB flash drive:
- Launch the Finder and locate the “Install OS Yosemite.app” file. Right-click (hold the “control” key and click) on it and select “Show Package Contents”.
- Open Contents, then SharedSupport, and double-click on the InstallESD.dmg (disk image) file to mount it. A volume called “OS X Install ESD” will show up on the desktop and under DEVICES in the Finder.
- In the “OS X Install ESD” volume, right-click on the “BaseSystem.dmg” file and select “Open” to mount it. (Double-click won’t perform any action because it is a hidden file.)
- Use Disk Utility to clone the “BaseSystem.dmg” to the USB flash drive:
- Select the “BaseSystem.dmg” in the left-hand pane and click on the “Restore” tab. The “Source” field will be populated with “BaseSystem.dmg”.
- Drag the “Install Yosemite” partition under the USB flash drive to the “Destination” field.
- Click the Restore button and then the Erase button.
- The USB flash drive will be written with the contents of “BaseSystem.dmg” file. Depending on the speed of your USB flash drive, it may take several minutes or longer to complete this operation.
- Once complete, the “Install Yosemite” partition will be renamed to “OS X Base System”.
- Use the Finder to navigate to the USB flash drive. You will see two “OS X Base System” volumes in the Finder’s left-hand pane. The USB flash drive is the last one.
- Under the USB flash drive’s “OS X Base System” partition, open the “System/Installation” folder. You will see an alias file named “Packages”. Delete it because we will replace it with a “Packages” folder below.
- Use a second Finder window to open the “OS X Install ESD” volume. (To open a second Finder window, you can use the Finder menu’s “File/New Finder Window” command.)
- Copy the “Packages” folder from the “OS X Install ESD” volume to the USB flash drive’s “System/Installation” folder.
- Required for Yosemite (not required for Mavericks): Copy the “BaseSystem.chunklist” and “BaseSystem.dmg” files from the “OS X Install ESD” volume to the USB flash drive’s root “/” folder. If you don’t do this, you will get an “undefined error 0” when attempting to install Yosemite.
- The USB flash drive is now complete. You can use it to boot a Mac to install Mac OS X 10.10 Yosemite.
- Unmount all the Yosemite installer volumes by ejecting them; you must eject “OS X Base System” before “OS X Install ESD”.
Re-configure the Finder to hide system files. Run these commands in the “Terminal” app:
defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles FALSE
# Close all Finder instances (and re-launch so settings take effect).
killall Finder
Boot With USB Flash Drive
To boot a Mac with the USB flash drive:
- Insert the USB flash drive.
- While holding the “option/alt” key down, turn on the Mac to display the boot Startup Manager.
- You should see one or two icons, one for the internal hard drive and/or another called “OS X Base System” for the USB flash drive. (The internal hard drive may not be visible if it does not have a bootable partition installed.)
- Note: If you don’t see the USB flash drive’s “OS X Base System”, 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.
- Select the “OS X Base System” and hit the “return/enter” key to boot from the USB flash drive.
Hopefully, this post will help you to create your own bootable USB flash drive installer for Mac OS X 10.10 Yosemite or Mac OS X 10.9 Mavericks.
If your Mac suddenly refuses to boot up properly, you might need a bootable macOS USB installer to make repairs. But how do you create such a disk if all you're left with is a Windows 10 computer? Fortunately, there's a great tool that you can use for free to create bootable macOS media on a USB drive in a Windows 10 environment. This article shows you how to download a macOS DMG file, format a USB drive using a GUID Partition Table, burn the DMG to the drive and boot your Mac from the USB. All the steps except the last one are done on a Windows 10 machine.
Part 1: Download macOS or Mac OS X DMG File
The first step is to get the DMG disk image file for the version of macOS that you want. You can get a copy of the latest macOS version from Apple download portal or App Store here. There are also several other direct download sites that offer various versions of Mac OS X in DMG format rather than the standard APP format that runs on Mac. Since you're working in a Windows environment, you need the DMG rather than the APP file.
macOS DMG Download Link:
Part 2: Easily Create a Bootable macOS USB from Windows 10/8/7 PC
You have now formatted the partition of USB drive. It's time to download UUByte DMG Editor for Windows. Although this is a premium software, you can use the initial free trial period to create a bootable macOS USB on Windows 10. After installing the application, follow the sequence of steps shown below:
Updates (Dec 8, 2020): The latest version of UUByte DMG Editor is able to format the USB automatically.
Step 1: Right-click the software icon on desktop and select 'Run as Administrator' from the contextual menu. Choose 'Run' when prompted.
Step 2: Insert your formatted USB drive, and click 'Burn' tab on the main screen.
Step 3: Click 'Browse' button to import macOS dmg file into the program. And select the USB drive name from the second row. You can also set a volume labe for that USB drive.
Step 4: Click 'Burn' button at the bottom to start the process. You will see a progress bar and wait around 10 minutes to get it done.
Step 5: Once the progress bar is at 100%, a bootable macOS USB is ready. After that, you can use that USB drive for installing macOS.
This is one of the easiest way to create a bootable macOS USB on a Windows PC. The steps are simple and instructions are pretty clear.
Part 3: Format USB Drive to GPT If Failed
If the USB drive created in above step was not seen as a bootable device on your Mac, then you need to take an addtional step before burning. That's formatting the USB to GPT.
Mostly, the USB drive was formmated to FAT32 in default when being shipped out from the factory. However, FAT32 can be only used for installing OS with legacy BISO, which doesn't work for macOS. So the next step is to format your USB drive in the GPT partition style in order to burn installation files to the desired USB drive. You can do this in Command Prompt as admin. In elevated Command Prompt (Ctrl+Shift+Enter), input the following series of commands followed by Enter after each line:
Diskpart
List disk
Select Disk X (X stands for the USB drive name that appears after the previous command)
Clean
Convert GPT
Create partition primary
Part 4: Boot Mac from macOS USB Drive for Installation
Now remove the USB drive and insert it into the Mac computer. To boot from the disk, you need to hold down the option key when you hear the boot chime. This will take you to the Startup Disk Manager, where you should be able to see the USB drive. It might have a different name, but as long as it is bootable, you'll be able to see it there. Once you select it, the computer will boot from the disk and the macOS installation will begin.
Troubleshooting
Flashing Error: You might receive a flashing error message at the end of burning process. Please don'y worry and ignore this error. The USB becomes a bootable disk and you can use it to install macOS even this error pops up.
About Official EI Capitan DMG: There has a serious bug in the official release of OS X El Capitan, which contains .pkg installer only. The burning process will fail for sure. Please use this modified EI Capitan DMG file instead, which was approved a good option.
Download Os X Yosemite Bootable Usb Drive
Registration Failed: Please make sure the computer is connected to Internet and no proxy or VPB is running during registration. If the problem still exists, please send an email to support team asking for a new code.
Conclusion
Download Os X Yosemite Dmg
The whole process might look a bit complicated if this is your first time, but just follow the instructions in this article and you should be fine. That being said, you need to be careful when downloading the DMG file and formatting your USB drive. If you don't do these two steps correctly, the output drive from the UUByte DMG Editor software won't be bootable, which means you can't install macOS from that USB drive, and you may need to do the whole thing over again.