Apple Event: May 7th at 7 am PT
It makes no sense that Disk Utility has no native "build Mac OS X installer drive" functionality,
It also makes no sense that the recreation of a disaster recovery partition is not built right into Disk Utility.
MacBook Pro with Retina display, OS X El Capitan (10.11)
That may be because a Recovery HD is installed on your drive when you install OS X so an installer drive is not needed. You already have one. Nevertheless, the ability to create a USB flash drive installer is built-in to OS X. It helps to get the facts before you complain. The forums are not a complaint site and such complaints are forbidden in the Terms of Use that you didn't read when you signed up for the forums.
Make your own El Capitan flash drive installer using the El Capitan tool:
You can create a El Capitan flash drive installer via the Terminal. El Capitan has its own built-in installer maker you use via the Terminal:
You will need a freshly partitioned and formatted USB flash drive with at least 8GBs. Leave the name of the flash drive at the system default, "Untitled." Do not change this name. Wait for the process to complete which will take quite some time.
Open the Terminal in the Utilities folder. Copy and paste the following command line in its entirety into the Terminal window.
sudo /Applications/Install\ OS\ X\ El\ Capitan.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/Untitled --applicationpath "/Applications/Install OS X El Capitan.app"
Press RETURN, enter admin password (will not echo to the window) then press RETURN again.
You need to have the installer in your Applications folder or change the paths in the above command line.
Mac OS X Feedback
Apologies, I neglected to put "Am I missing something? Is there a hidden feature?" I was rushed.
and sorry, I was not asking "how to do it" in general but rather "how to do it with the regular Disk Utikity" which seems to be where one would expect such functionality. So I take it that Disk Utility is just not up to the task. Got it.
As far as a recovery partition, either replacing a failed boot drive or wiping an Apple HD down with a repartitioning can kill the recovery partition. And while newer Macs can recover from the Internet (built in, nifty), having a recovery partition in the aforementioned conditions when super fast unlimited data internet is not available is key.
So, what I am hearing is that 1) need to provide people who are not command line oriented (majority of the world) with someting like DiskMakerX and 2) if they lost their recovery partition, they are relegated to carrying that system install thumb drive around with them until they get a new machine, or take the chance of being inoperable while on travel. (Cell data is pricy and hotel wifi is lousy).
Thats a shame. Had hoped for some plist magic to turn the hidden features on in Disk Utility. The link that Bob Harris provided is apparently the answer.
Followed your suggestion and posted feedback to Apple at that link. The feedback i provided: (closing the loop here)
Disk utility has had a very nice UI overhaul in El Capitan. With the new UI, it could be more robust and support some basic functionality that is a reoccurring theme in Mac OS X forums:
1) be able to create a system install drive from the downloaded installer
2) be able to recreate the recovery partition for a repartitioned drive or a replacement drive.
If the argument is made that these functions already exist in some arcane command line program, then perhaps that same argument can be applied to getting rid of Disk Utility. On the other hand, if Disk Utility is a good thing to have in the system (and I firmly believe so) then it makes sense to make Disk Utility robust and comprehensive enough to support anything that was built in a command line version of code that deals with disk management.
Why isn't the ability to create a bootable thumb drive Mac OS X installer built into Disk Utility?
