Can't create bootable USB installer High Sierra

Question

Can't create bootable USB installer High Sierra

Since upgrading to High Sierra made my Macintosh HD partition unmountable, and Internet Recovery has no idea what APFS is, I have been advised to wipe the drive and reinstall.

However creating a USB boot disk for High Sierra on a second Mac also on 10.13.5 according to these instructions doesn't work so I'm stuck:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201372

I formatted the 32Gb USB Drive as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) first and called it MyVolume so I could paste the command exactly from the above link:

sudo /Applications/Install\ macOS\ High\ Sierra.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/MyVolume --applicationpath /Applications/Install\ macOS\ High\ Sierra.app

Terminal complains:

/Volumes/MyVolume --applicationpath is not a valid volume mount point.

Is the instruction incorrect?

MacBook Pro, macOS High Sierra (10.13.5), 2TB SSD

Posted on Jun 5, 2018 5:25 AM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

Luis Sequeira1

Level 9

68,014 points

Jun 5, 2018 6:55 AM in response to designdirector

It looks like the character between "MyVolume" and "--applicationpath" is something other than a space, and hence the command is being interpreted as if the volume is located at "/Volumes/MyVolume --applicationpath".

Try pasting this into a window in TextEdit, then delete the blank character between "MyVolume" and "--applicationpath", and type a space in its place. It will probably look exactly the same. Then copy from there and paste into a Terminal window.

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Answer 2

Jun 5, 2018 7:26 AM in response to Luis Sequeira1

Thanks - pasting this into a Plain Text Textedit document and then copying and pasting it into Terminal did the trick.

There is something weird there in a rich text document to do with the italicisation around MyVolume: if pasted into Rich Text and then you try to delete the italicised MyVolume and the space after it, then it turns the two minus signs before application path into one longer minus sign character.

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Answer 3

Jun 5, 2018 5:36 AM in response to designdirector

The perils of obediently obeying GPS directions, and copy/paste.

The /Volumes/MyVolume is a placeholder for your own mounted USB stick name. So, if your mounted USB stick on the Desktop is named "Untitled,", then the correct replacement for the createinstallmedia command line would be --volume /Volumes/Untitled.

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Answer 4

Jun 5, 2018 5:46 AM in response to VikingOSX

Thanks for pointing that out, but as I'd said:

I formatted the 32Gb USB Drive as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) first and called it MyVolume so I could paste the command exactly from the above link

I also tried other names on a Support call with a Senior Advisor from Apple both formatting the USB with different names and editing the name in the command with the same result. They have gone away to do a bit more research....

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Answer 5

Jun 5, 2018 7:30 AM in response to designdirector

Thanks for the reminder to read more thoroughly. No excuses. Glad it got solved.

I will not post any Terminal syntax, or code into TextEdit. I use a proper Text Editor in the BBEdit product. Once the trial expires, it becomes the free BBEdit lite, which remains quite useful.

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Can't create bootable USB installer High Sierra

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