Creating a bootable installer to fix Macbook

Does the flash drive or "volume" I use need to be empty? The instructions said something about "erasing volume". Will an external hard drive work for this process? Finally has anyone's had success using this to revive their MacBook after the question mark file popped up? This appears to be my last step before needing major repair... I don't have a time machine back up. Disk utilities didn't work. Reinstall Man OS X didn't work either. This is a 2011 MacBook Pro.

MacBook Pro 13″, macOS 10.13

Posted on May 26, 2020 11:59 AM

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HWTech

Level 9

69,530 points

Posted on May 26, 2020 12:43 PM

Any USB stick or USB drive should work for a bootable macOS USB installer. Technically you just need a properly formatted macOS volume on the drive so that the "createinstallmedia" utility can recognize the volume which will be erased during the creation of the USB installer.

If you have installed macOS 10.12.6+ on this laptop at some point then the updated system firmware should allow you to boot into Internet Recovery Mode to access the online macOS installers:

https://support.apple.com/kb/HT204904

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Creating a bootable installer to fix Macbook

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