Hey guys, I have a flash drive with a bootable El Capitan installer. I would like to create another flash drive with the El Capitan on it to use on a Macbook with a failed hard drive.
What's the easiest way I can create the the bootable flash drive with el Capitan on it from the one with the installerplease?
No, the bootable USB installer is just that a means of installing El Capitan on a macs hard drive.
Are you certain the hard drive on that mac has failed? If it has failed then you would need to
replace it, and then use the bootable installer to install El Capitan.
No, the bootable USB installer is just that a means of installing El Capitan on a macs hard drive.
Are you certain the hard drive on that mac has failed? If it has failed then you would need to
replace it, and then use the bootable installer to install El Capitan.
It might be possible to clone the first El Capitan USB installer to another USB stick. You can try using Disk Utility Restore, but it doesn't always work well especially for bootable drives. Carbon Copy Cloner is much more reliable.
You can just create another macOS USB installer using the official Apple instructions:
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201372
Why do you think you need to create another bootable USB installer for use on another mac, just use the one you have.
If you need to make another bootable USB and you still have the Install OS X El Capitan.app, put it back in your
Applications folder and use the createinstallmedia command in Terminal, as HWTech says.
Or if you do not have the Install OS X El Capitan.app to hand you can insert the first USB to your mac,
open it and drag the Install OS X El Capitan.app (make sure it is 6.2GBs) from within the USB and place it in the
Applications folder and then create the second bootable USB, using the instructions linked to above.
Or download El Capitan again from here, How to upgrade to OS X El Capitan – Apple Support
follow the stages in Sections 4 to 7 to get the Install OS X El Capitan.app, and then create your
bootable USB using the instructions linked to by HWTech.
Thanks guys but I had thought the El Capitan installer disk is only to "install" the osx but will not be a bootable osx like when you boot a working osx and go immediately to the desktop and internet, is this not so?
Sorry I am having trouble explaining myself so let me try another way please. With the current usb El Capitan installer I have, can I plug that into an iMac with a non-working hard drive and it will go to the desktop ready for me to surf the net just as if I were to power up my iMac with a working drive and do my regular every day stuff?
For example, I just plugged the usb into a MBP holding down the Option key which then shows the machine's HDD and the "Install OS X El Capitan" so I choose the latter. This then brings up a window which shows "To set up the installation of OS X, click continue". So it does not go from boot up to a the el capitan desktop, hope I have explained my issue better this time?
Thanks for confirming. I am trying to help someone with this, he said his HDD on his 2009 MBP is not working and is asking me to put el capitan on a flash drive for him so this is why I posted for help. I will try out the instructions given above in a short while, will let you guys know if I should be successful, thanks.
Hmnn, I am trying to create the bootable flash drive on my iMac which has Mohave but it is showing "this copy of El Capitan is too old to run on this version of osx" so I am trying now on a Snow Leopard machine.
Meantime, looking at the instructions given in HW Tech's link guys, I am thinking those instructions are to create another installer flash drive and not what I need which is to create a bootable osx flash drive? Please confirm.
mikehende wrote:
Thanks for confirming. I am trying to help someone with this, he said his HDD on his 2009 MBP is not working and is asking me to put el capitan on a flash drive for him so this is why I posted for help. I will try out the instructions given above in a short while, will let you guys know if I should be successful, thanks.
What is the intended goal for the 2009 MBP? Is it to get the laptop working or just to access the data on the hard drive?
Any mac that came preinstalled with an OS newer than Mac OS X El Capitan will refuse to convert the InstallMacOSX.pkg to Install OS X El Capitan.app. You need to have a mac that can run El Capitan to do that, therefore any mac that at one point in
its life that could have run El Capitan.
If you want to be able to use that mac you need to install El Capitan on an external hard drive.
Your repeated use of the phrase bootable USB is causing the confusion.
Normally a bootable USB is used to describe a USB stick that has been configured
so that it can be used to install a version of Mac OS X or macOS on a Mac.
Something that you could try as you already have a bootable USB installer, plug it in to the MacBook.
Connect an external hard drive to the MacBook. Start the mac up while pressing and holding down the option/ alt key.
Wait a couple of minutes until the Startup Manager shows, select the bootable USB stick, press Return.
Once booted to the USB stick select Disk Utility. Highlight the external HD Disk icon, not any indented Volumes.
click on Erase, give the Disk a name, Format: Mac OS X Extended (Journaled), Scheme: GUID Partition Map.
Click Erase. After that is done start the installation of El Capitan, make sure you select the external drive as the destination disk.
Yes guys, the goal is to use a flash drive to run El Capitan instead of the internal hard drive. I had 2 apple support Tech's work on this yesterday via screen share on my Mohave iMac. They used the Sudo terminal command but when it was done and I inserted the flash drive it was still only an installer version.
I am attempting this to help out someone so I will ask him about using an external drive but if he has to do them might as well replace the internal drive I am thinking.
I think you are on the money Eau Rogue that it may work with an external drive even though I cannot understand the difference why it would work on an external and not a flash drive? When I had High Sierra on my iMac I had created on an external drive the same OS X as a backup should my internal drive ever fail and that process went 1,2,3.
If you are determined to install El Capitan on a USB flash drive then you will need to format it as described above,
El Capitan as an operating system takes up about 20GBs so use a flash drive that is at least 32GBs. If you want
to operate off the flash drive as if it is a proper mac you would need to think about using a flash drive with much
more storage, so therefore you would actually be better off using an external hard drive.
Have you not considered just replacing the macs internal hard drive with a new one.
mikehende wrote:
Yes guys, the goal is to use a flash drive to run El Capitan instead of the internal hard drive. I had 2 apple support Tech's work on this yesterday via screen share on my Mohave iMac. They used the Sudo terminal command but when it was done and I inserted the flash drive it was still only an installer version.
I am attempting this to help out someone so I will ask him about using an external drive but if he has to do them might as well replace the internal drive I am thinking.
I think you are on the money Eau Rogue that it may work with an external drive even though I cannot understand the difference why it would work on an external and not a flash drive? When I had High Sierra on my iMac I had created on an external drive the same OS X as a backup should my internal drive ever fail and that process went 1,2,3.
If you want to install macOS to a USB stick, then you need a second USB stick. The first USB stick contains the installer and the second USB stick will be the destination for macOS which will end up being able to boot to an El Capitan desktop like the internal drive.
FYI, macOS will run extremely slow from a USB stick, but it will allow you to access the data on the internal drive and perhaps allow you to determine what is wrong with the laptop.
No idea what you mean by that, does not make a bit of sense.
I have asked the guy if he wishes to do so.
The guys now wants me to clone the snow leopard osx from the 2009 MBP I have here to the flash drive and if that doesn't work then install Linux on the flash drive.
Making flash drive with El Capitan OSX?
