Apple's policy, according to which the company installs its own operating system on computers produced under its brand, makes them extremely stable. By purchasing a MacBook and regularly updating the OS, you may never have to reinstall it. If you have Internet access, the system can be easily reinstalled over the network. If circumstances require you to install macOS from a flash drive, you need to do it correctly.
Since 2013, Apple has stopped selling the operating system to users. By purchasing any Mac, be it a laptop or a mini version, you receive macOS for rent and are provided with free updates for the entire life of the device.
- Find the App Store icon in the Dock and open it.
- On the main page on the right side, under the account settings, there is a link that can take you to the site with the current OS. Currently the latest version is 10.3 High Sierra.
- Click on the “Download” button. The distribution weighs more than 5 GB, so the time it takes to receive it will depend on the speed of the connection used.
- When the download is complete, the installer will automatically launch.
- We don't need it at the moment. Since we are going to create an offline bootable media, we need to close it. Click on the program window so that the controls appear on the top panel. Select the marked item. A similar operation can be performed with the keyboard shortcut ⌘Q. In macOS, this is a standard shortcut that allows you to close any active window.
Old OS versions
If you want to install another, older version of the operating system, you can also find them in the App Store. El Capitan, Yosemite or Mountain Lion are placed in the purchase section, provided they have been used before. This is due to the company's licensing policy. The operating systems shown in the screenshot are considered purchased, and subsequent ones are rented by the user from Apple.
Creating a bootable USB flash drive
To create an installation disk on a MacBook, just use the terminal. macOS works perfectly with the Windows FS and does not require the installation of Transmac analogues. The NTFS format is supported out of the box in read mode, and FAT32 and exFAT are fully supported.
You will have to format the flash drive if it uses any Linux file system, for example, ext3. Before use, the removable disk must in any case be cleaned of the information on it.
Formatting
Formatting in macOS is done using Disk Utility. You can find it by opening Launchpad in the Others folder or using Finder. Let's choose the second option as it is more convenient. Traditionally, a flash drive for modern operating systems should be at least 8 GB.
- Open Finder and select “Applications” in the navigation area. Open the folder marked in the screenshot.
- Select the specified utility.
- We are looking for external drives. Select the name of the flash drive specified by the manufacturer, highlighting it. In the top control menu, the “Erase” button is activated. Click on it to open the next dialogue.
- The system will automatically offer us the format and layout of the sections. They should match those shown in the screenshot. To clean and format the flash drive with the selected parameters, press the marked button.
Now there is zero information left on the external media and you can write the distribution kit to it.
Recording a distribution
The file we downloaded from the App Store is not an ISO image. This is a full-fledged installation wizard with its own set of utilities. For this reason, the system places it in the programs folder and not in downloads. From there we will record it onto external media.
- We return to the “Utilities” folder and launch “Terminal”.
- Enter the following write command on behalf of the system administrator:
Quotes are not required, but instead of Kingstone we indicate the name of the flash drive used.
- Enter the password. The symbols will not be displayed. We complete the set by pressing the Enter button.
- The system will ask you for confirmation to clear the selected volume. Type “Y” and press the enter key.
- Before copying data, the system erases the flash drive.
- The recording ends with the appearance of information messages about the creation of bootable media and the transfer of the data required by the installer to it.
The write command syntax varies for each distribution. Therefore, if you are planning to make a flash drive to reinstall macOS other than High Sierra, please visit the Apple support page provided. The finished command from there can be immediately copied to the terminal.
Installing macOS
After connecting the media to the USB port, we reboot. Mac computers do not use the usual BIOS, so there is no additional configuration required.
- Our task is to prevent the computer from booting from the SSD and launching the initial volume selection menu. Therefore, immediately upon reboot, hold down the “Option” key. Hold it until the dialogue shown in the screenshot appears. The Windows volume will be present if it is installed on the Boot Camp partition. Here you will need to translate the specified arrow symbol from Macintosh HD to the installer icon.
- Select the language in which menus and dialogs will be displayed.
- For a “clean” installation, we need to open Disk Utility.
- We select the volume on which we are going to install the OS and erase the data. The steps are similar to what we did when formatting the flash drive.
- Close Disk Utility and select the marked item.
- The OS installation wizard starts.
- Select the Macintosh HD volume.
- Fill out the fields to log in with your Apple ID details.
- At this stage, you can transfer information from a backup copy, if one was made. For a “clean” installation, select the specified item.
Next, all we have to do is study the license agreement and configure regional settings. During the installation process, the computer will reboot itself several times, after which you will be taken to the fresh macOS desktop.
Finally
As you can see, installing the Apple operating system is quite simple. To create bootable media, no third-party programs or special knowledge are required, and ready-made commands can be found on the technical support site.
Video instructions
You can watch the entire system installation process in more detail in the video below.
A bootable MAC OS flash drive is created quite simply and quickly. This can be done using the same operating system or any other.
1. We use MAC OS
In all cases, to complete the task we will need an empty flash drive with a capacity of at least 8 GB, as well as an Internet connection. If you use MAC OS, you also need an Apple ID account.
The step-by-step process for creating a boot drive is as follows:
- Download the system image from apple.com. There is always the latest version. Usually on the main page there is promotional material for the OS and the inscription “Update your system now.” It can also be found on the App Store. To do this, use the search. Apple companies often give away their latest creations for free.
- Insert the flash drive. Run the downloaded image. This is a special utility for creating bootable media. In the left panel, select the inserted drive. Go to the "Partition" tab.
- Under “Partition Layout”, select “1 Partition”. It is also advisable to indicate the name of the flash drive. It is most convenient to name it according to the name of the operating system. In our case it is “El Captain”.
- In addition, indicate the format next to “Format” “Mac OS Extended (Journaled)” and the size of the flash drive - enter as much as is on the media. Click "Apply".
- Now go back to the downloaded folder and launch the terminal. In it, enter the command shown in Figure 2. It can also be seen in this file.
- Wait approximately 15 minutes. After this, the process will be completed and you will have bootable media ready to install the operating system.
Clue: To boot from the resulting media, connect it to your computer while holding down the Alt button. Then simply follow the installer's instructions.
As you can see, everything here is extremely simple. Difficulties arise if you are not able to use MAC OS to complete the task. Then you will have to resort to “workarounds”.
2. We use Windows
In this case, the installation image from the App Store will not work. You need to search on torrent trackers or regular sites. And then there are two options - either you will find the image in .dmg format, or in .iso format.
In the first case, you need to do this:
- Download and install the TransMac program on your computer. The best way to do this is on the website acutesystems.com (it’s official). The program is paid, but it has a trial period of 15 days. During this time, you can manage to create many flash drives.
- In the left panel, select the flash drive that you are going to make bootable. Right-click on it and click “Format Disk for Mac” in the drop-down list. A prompt will appear in which you simply need to click “Yes” or “OK”.
- Once formatting is complete, right-click on the drive again, but now select “Restore with Disk Image.”
- In the window that appears, under the words “Disk Image to restore”, indicate the path to the .dmg file that you downloaded earlier. Click OK. In all subsequent warnings, also click “OK” or “Yes”. Everywhere they talk about the fact that all data will be lost, and the image will be installed on the selected disk. But that's what we need.
In the future, use the flash drive in the same way as when creating one in MAC OS, that is, insert it into the computer and hold down “Alt”. The corresponding menu will appear and the OS can be easily installed.
If you managed to find an image in .iso format (which is most likely), then you have a lot of options for creating a bootable drive with it. And they are all absolutely free. For example, you can use Rufus.
To do this, do this:
- Download the program from the official website (rufus.akeo.ie) and run it on your computer.
- In the “Device” field, select the flash drive that you are going to make bootable. You can change the remaining fields up to the one related to the name at your discretion. If you don’t understand, it’s better not to touch them at all.
- In the New Volume Label field, enter the name of your media. This is not necessary, but it is better to name the drive accordingly to make it easier to deal with later.
- Check the boxes next to “Quick format” and “Create a boot disk.” To the right of the last one, select “ISO image” and click on the button in the form of a disk drive. Specify the path to the downloaded image.
- Click "Finish" and wait for the process to complete.
In the same way, you can use the following programs:
- Enter the command "diskutil list". After completing it, you will see a complete list of disks that are currently in use on the computer. Find your drive there.
- Enter the command "diskutil unmountdisk [media name]". That is, if the flash drive is called “/dev/mydisk”, the command will look like “diskutil unmountdisk /dev/mydisk”.
- Enter the command “sudo dd if=[folder where the image in .iso format is located] of=[name of the removable drive] bs=1024”. Then if the folder with the image is called “z:/papka/obraz”, then the command will look like “sudo dd if= z:/papka/obraz of=/dev/mydisk bs=1024”.
- Wait for the creation process to complete.
As you can see, in Linux it is easiest to complete the task.
I currently have a 16GB flash drive and I want to install two operating systems, MacOS Sierra and OS X El Capitan, on it. On my PC, these versions work stably, quickly, and will continue to develop, so I chose them. You can use the versions you need.
In this article we will look at installing different images that will help achieve the same goal. The size of the flash drive can vary using different methods from 4 to 16 GB.
Creating a bootable flash drive from original App Store images
To create this installation flash drive we will need:
- Flash drive at least 16GB;
- Sierra and El Capitan installation images from the App Store;
- Latest version.
Format and split the flash drive into sections
The first thing we need to do is format the flash drive. Be sure to use the diagram GUID. Now this flash drive has an Apple standard, a hidden EFI partition (aka ESP) was automatically created on it, which we will use for Clover, but we need to create another partition, we are making a flash drive to install two systems.
By the way, if you are going to do what I did in Sierra Disk Utility, then you should take into account that formatting is successful only the second, and sometimes even the third time. In order for formatting and other manipulations to be successful the first time, you should unmount the internal partitions. Near which there is an EJECT icon, if this condition is met, everything will go without a hitch.
Now let's move on to the breakdown into sections. Open the “Partition” tab.
After formatting, we have only one partition; to install two systems, we need to create a second one. To do this, click “+” under the diagram and, highlighting each section, give it a NAME. For clarity, I set the name El Capitan, but it is recommended to use the section name without spaces to avoid recording errors. So in the name El Capitan, you can use El_Capitan instead of a space.
After assigning names, click “Apply”.
And we get the desired two sections.
Writing boot images to flash drive partitions
Recording OS X El Capitan
Move the installation image to the “Programs” folder and open the terminal utility. Then we enter the code, to simplify it you can copy and paste.
sudo /Applications/Install\ OS\ X\ El\ Capitan.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia –volume /Volumes/ El Capitan–applicationpath “/Applications/Install OS X El Capitan.app”
It is worth considering that commands must be preceded by two hyphens, very often when copying and pasting into the terminal, two hyphens “–” are replaced by one “-“. In this case, an error will be displayed. This glitch is very common on websites, since many engines automatically replace characters.
(instead of El Capitan we write the name of your USB partition)
Press ENTER, enter the password, El Capitan may also ask for confirmation. In this case, press Y and Enter.
DONE, which will mean that the recording was completed successfully. Writing files can take varying amounts of time, it all depends on the speed of the drive and hard drive, and system load, so don’t panic, just wait for it to complete. Forcibly removing a flash drive while writing or reading can lead not only to data loss, but also turn the drive into an interior element; in many cases, the flash drive may not be repairable.
Recording MacOS Sierra
We perform all the same actions as in the previous case. Only the recording code will differ. To record Sierra we use the code
sudo /Applications/Install\ macOS\ Sierra.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia –volume /Volumes/ Sierra–applicationpath /Applications/Install\ macOS\ Sierra.app –nointeraction
(instead of Sierra we write the name of your USB partition)
We wait for the operation to complete until the message appears in the terminal DONE.
At this stage, the installation (bootable) flash drive is completely ready for installation on Apple computers or using Clover EFI, which is already installed on the hard drive of the Hackintosh.
For a clean installation on a hackintosh PC, you need to install the Clover EFI Bootloader. I will not repeat myself; I have many articles in which this point is described in detail, so follow the link and read: the only point is to select any partition of the Flash drive we created instead of the system disk. Everything else is exactly the same.
Be careful when setting up config.plist to match the two operating systems. If your configuration does not allow you to get by with one file, create two different ones and place them in the Clover folder, and during installation and download, select the one you already require through the bootloader control panel. To understand how it works, I advise you to read the book - this is the most detailed instructions from the bootloader developer.
Creating a bootable flash drive using recovery images
To do this, you need to download official Apple recovery packages for Recovery HD.
Since we are making this flash drive to install two specific systems, we will download packages for them accordingly.
The sizes of these packages do not exceed 500 MB each, I recommend downloading them one by one, before downloading the second package, move the first one to a folder calling it the name of the system for which the package is intended, otherwise I guarantee confusion.)
Now we launch the downloaded packages one by one and select the corresponding partition on our flash drive as the installation location.
I launch RecoveryHDUpdate.pkg from the El Capitan folder and select the El Capitan partition on the flash drive being created. 
After the installation is complete, I repeat everything with RecoveryHDUpdate.pkg from the Sierra folder and install it on the corresponding partition of the flash drive. 
I'm waiting for the installation to finish. 
I run the command in the terminal.
And I check what happened. 
And it turned out as planned!
I repeat, in order to repeat this, a 4 GB flash drive is sufficient.
All that remains is to load your hardware using this UEFI flash drive as a boot device, go to the Clover menu and select the required Recovery HD partition, and then everything is exactly the same as on any original Mac.
A bootable flash drive with Recovery HD can also be created from under Windows using the program.
Why Recovery HDs weigh so little
Because this is not a full-fledged system, but a kind of engineering OS for restoring and configuring the main one, which is stored in an image and deployed only when it boots, Windows also has similar images with wim extensions, the same Win PE is a suitable example for comparison.
Having booted into Recovery HD, we will only get access to the disk utility in order to partition our HDD, and of course there is the opportunity to deploy your own or someone else’s image with the system, as well as the ability to use the Time Machine, but that’s not what I suggested, there is official item by clicking on which any person. can install the system from scratch, using the following algorithm instead of the installation image of the Apple server.
Booted into Recovery HD, selected disk utility, partitioned your disk as it should be according to Apple rules and your own needs, closed disk utility, selected restore..., the system will automatically contact Apple servers and ask which partition you want, you will indicate to it the partition you had previously planned in disk utility, the installation has started. The installation time depends only on the speed of the Internet and the load on the Apple servers at the immediate moment; in this way, installing macOS is even twice as fast as the classic one, but there are difficult moments, but they are rare.)
As you can understand, there are several ways to achieve the same goal. I hope now you will always have order with bootable flash drives.
This article was created based on my personal experience and advice from an expert in the hackintosh community.
Today we'll touch Windows a little again. More precisely, we will touch on two main categories of users, and Windows will “touch” itself :) In my little experience of communicating with blog readers, I have identified several main types of Mac users:
- Future “hackintosh people” are “Windows people” who want to try what Macintosh is, but don’t want to buy a Mac.
- “Strange Mac users” are those users of Apple computers who buy a Mac, but completely remove Mac OS X from it and install the main and only Windows system, but then, having come to their senses, want to install Mac OS X again.
- “Mappy addicts in surprise” are real “poppy addicts” who, for some reason, “screwed up” Mac OS X (it happens) and now they need to install a new clean version of the OS, but they don’t have another computer with Mac OS X at hand to “deploy” the installation image.
The content, so to speak, is quite different, but the only thing that unites them is the question: “How to create a bootable USB flash drive with Mac OS X from Windows?” or “How to make a bootable USB flash drive for a Mac on Windows?” It would seem that the question is complicated, but in fact it is not. If, of course, you know how and with what to do it;) And in this article we will look at one of the possible methods. From the title of the article you already understand that to help you out (us) there will be a Windows program TransMac. In general, this utility is designed to work with disks in the file system HFS+ and images in the format .DMG. But besides the usual work with the Mac file system TransMac can format drives with images. It sounds strange, but there is nothing strange about it, since in essence this function is similar to full cloning of an image onto a physical device. Well, okay, probably enough stories, let's move on to the instructions. We will need:
- USB flash drive, SD card or any other 8 GB USB drive (or more);
- Windows XP, Vista, 7 or 8;
- TransMac (~1.5 MB);
- installation image with Mac OS X in .DMG format.
When all the components are assembled, we begin to shamanize. Install and launch TransMac. It is worth noting that The application can be used for free and fully for 15 days , after which you need to buy a license (or use other alternative methods to get it), although 15 days is enough to create an “emergency flash drive” :) For Windows 7 and Windows 8, TransMac must be run as system administrator A:
After launching, we are greeted by a rather boring interface of the application, we do not pay attention to the paucity of appearance;) In the menu on the left, we find and select our USB drive, then right-click on it, select from the context menu Format Disk > Format with Disk Image B as the picture shows:
In the Explorer window that opens, select the pre-downloaded installation image from Mac OS X in .DMG format. After opening it, a window will be displayed warning us that all data on the selected drive will be destroyed. We agree:
Well, that's basically it. At this stage, we see the process of creating an installation drive:
Creating a drive can take a fairly long period of time - this depends on a number of reasons: the USB drive itself and the speed of its interface, system performance and, in fact, the size of the DMG image. After successful completion of the procedure, you can click on your drive and see the tree of folders and files that appeared on the “flash drive” - this is the structure of the “expanded” installation image:
All is ready! Owners of original Macs can boot from such a flash drive in the usual way: hold down the alt ⌥ or Option ⌥ key (which is the same thing) When the computer starts, before the “gong”, we wait for the boot manager to load in which we select our created USB drive. “Hackintosh people” need to use some kind of EFI bootloader: Chameleon, Clover, PC-EFI and so on…
Creating Clover & Chameleon Boot USB Flash Disk
under Windows XP and higher.
Full (partial - format only) installation of Clover bootloader on USB Flash drive:
On the menu Options->Configuration choose:
1. Boot Data set (set of loader files):
- Built-in (built-in revisions " Clover&Chameleon«),
- External (external) - downloads a zip archive with a folder and file structure similar to the installed bootloader,
- Not Install (do not install) - formatting only with installation of boot sectors.
2. Format options (formatting options):
- Boot records (boot sectors) -> Clover ,
- Align to sectors: 8192 (default)
- Align to sectors: 63 (if some strange/old BIOSes don't see the flash drive)
- Rest default.
3. Multi Partitioning (breakdown into volumes):
- Boot Partition Size (the size of the boot volume is up to your taste) - uncheck this box if you do not plan to create a second volume on the same disk (for example, for the MACOSX distribution).
4. Enable Fixed Disk
(activation of work with non-USB drives) — warning -> « at one's own risk«!
5. Press the button " OK
«.
6. In the main program window -> Destination Disk
(destination drive) - select the required object (USB Flash Drive) for installation.
7. Press the button " Format Disk
«.
8. We wait and enjoy the result of the program.
Edit (if necessary) the loader configuration files
Extract the HFS(HFS+) partition image from the distribution package for deployment to a USB Flash drive:
The 10.9 Mavericks image is not bootable! Therefore, we use the converted image from here
For use:
Unpack the .zip archive, and the 5.hfs file in it can be immediately deployed to a flash drive via BDU.
Uploading the MACOSX distribution onto the second volume of a bootable USB Flash drive:
1. We carry out a complete installation of Clover bootloader on a USB Flash Drive with the checkbox checked Boot Partition Size.
2. We get USB Flash Drive
, divided into two volumes
. (Note: Unfortunately, by default, the OS Windows does not support multi-volume USB Flash Drive, therefore, only one partition will be available under Windows.)
3. Download the MACOSX distribution selected for installation. This distribution, of course, must meet all necessary requirements for installation on PC
4. Extract the image from the distribution kit HFS(HFS+) partition
(this will be a file with the extension hfs
)
The path to obtain the desired HFS image will depend on the degree of nativeness of your source distribution:
- For various distro assemblies, you can try extracting through the menu: Tools -> Extract HFS(HFS+) partition from DMG-files .
- What you are using may not be the original InstallESD.dmg taken from the retail packageInstallOSXMountainLion.app/Contents/SharedSupport/ but the original image once again packaged into another image and with a different name, for example OSXMountainLion.dmg. InstallESD.dmg from the repacked archive is easier to find and extract with the 7zFM.exe program. And only then, from it, get the HFS image we need.
5. In the main program window -> Destination Disk
- choose our USB Flash Drive
-> Part2
.
6. Press the button " Restore Partition
«.
7. In the explorer window that opens, select the unpacked file with the extension *. hfs
. The file size must be no larger than Part2
.
8. We wait and enjoy the result of the program
Note!!!
When installing OS X from this flash drive, the Recovery HD partition is not created automatically!
If you really need the Recovery HD section, download a separate package from the Apple website:
RecoveryHDUpdate.pkg
Using this package, follow the link to create a full-fledged Recovery HD partition for OS X Mavericks
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