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How to create a Mountain Lion bootable usb drive?

I have the mid 2012 MacBook Pro 13" non retina and I was wondering whereabouts do I go with creating a bootable usb drive of Mountain Lion. I'm currently downloading Mavericks from the Mac App Store and I just thought I should have ML as backup in case I encounter problems with Mavericks and therefore I can go back to ML.

Now ML already came with my computer when I bought it, so how would I go to copying ML to a bootable usb drive. I heard something I would have to download ML under purchases in order to proceeed. Is that true? If not, is there a better alternative? Thanks in advance.

MacBook Pro, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.3)

Posted on Apr 8, 2014 8:15 AM

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2 replies

Apr 8, 2014 8:45 AM in response to Justinparker

If your Mac came with Mt Lion on it when it was new you'll need to use the Online Internet Recovery system to download Mt Lion to some other disk drive other than the internal hard drive. The Online Internet Recovery system is different than the built in Recovery HD partition on the internal drive. To access it at startup hold down the Command + the Option/alt + the r keys and keep them held down until you see a globe on the screen. It is best to have the system connected to your internet router with an Ethernet cable.


Have a blank external drive or a drive that has a blank partition connected to your Mac before you start the process. Once you boot to the OIR system format the external drive and or partition on an external drive Mac OS Extended (Journaled). Then when you start the download of Mt Lion point it to install on that external drive or partition.


As for actually creating a Mt Lion USB install thumb drive there are many tutorials on the net for doing it. Some might say for Lion but the process is basically the same. Look at Lion Disk Maker, it is now called something else but a google search for that name will turn it up.

How to create a Mountain Lion bootable usb drive?

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