Using Disk Utility, is there a way to tell if a drive is bootable? I know that I can just try to boot from the drive to find out, but I have to check a number of drives. Looking for a quicker way to see if a drive is bootable. Thx
iMac, OS X Yosemite (10.10)
In El Capitan under Disk Utility it looks as though the following should work:
1. Select the disk/device to check.
2. Select the Info tab.
3. A panel appears. Scroll down if necessary. If the device is (might be) bootable the line Bootable should be set to Yes.
I think this will probably work in Sierra too. As mentioned in other answers, this may not be an absolute guarantee, but should give a fair indication.
If the Repair and Verify Disk Permissions buttons are not grayed out in Disk Utility when you select the volume, it has OS X at least partially installed, but that's no guarantee that it will actually boot.
You could try the Bless command in Terminal. I don't know if it will definitely determine if the volume is bootable, but if it doesn't have a blessed folder, then it definitely is not bootable.
This info from Carbon Copy Cloner developer provides a better explanation of the command than I could throw together:
Open Startup Disk in System Preferences. If it shows in the list, it should be bootable.
How to check if drive is bootable?
