How to create a bootable disk with macOS Sierra. How to create a bootable USB drive with macOS High Sierra and install it on Mac

New operating system macOS Sierra, tested since June of this year. Apple announced this during the presentation and.

Like previous releases, macOS Sierra is intended to be distributed through the Mac Store App Store. With a little effort, you can prepare yourself bootable USB flash drive with an operating system. This will make the installation process more flexible. Creation procedure boot drive with macOS Sierra is slightly different from previous systems, although not much more difficult. We encourage you to review the requirements before proceeding.

Requirements:

USB flash drive 16 GB or more.
Downloaded macOS Sierra Installer image.
Computer with operating system OS X El Capitan.

If everything is ready, you can start.

How to Create a Bootable USB Drive with macOS Sierra

Step 1: Download to your computer installation file"Install macOS Sierra."

Step 2: Launch Disk Utility from the Utilities folder.

Step 3: Connect the USB flash drive to your computer. It is worth considering that the disk will be formatted, so it should not contain important data.

Step 4: Select the USB drive in the left pane and click the Erase button on top panel.

Step 5: Rename the flash drive as SierraInstaller (or any other name without spaces). If a different name is used, the command below will need to be modified. Click the Erase button.

Step 6: Once you have prepared the flash drive, open the Terminal application from the Utilities folder and run the following command:

sudo /Applications/Install\ macOS\ Sierra.app/Contents/Resources/
createinstallmedia –volume /Volumes/Untitled –applicationpath /Applications/Install\ macOS\ Sierra.app –nointeraction &&say Done

Check your spelling. The most common mistake– no double dash before the word nointeraction. The command should look like this:

Step 7: Enter your password account, after which the creation process will start bootable usb-drive with macOS Sierra.

After 10-15 minutes, Terminal will complete creating the drive.

"Erasing Disk: 0%... 10%... 20%... 30%...100%...
Copying installer files to disk…
Copy complete.
Making disk bootable...
Copying boot files...
Copy complete.
Done."

Step 8: Close Terminal.

Step 9: Reboot your computer with the USB flash drive installed while holding down Alt keyboard(Option).

Step 10: You can start installing macOS Sierra.

Apple's policy, according to which the company installs its own operating system on computers produced under its brand, makes them extremely stable. By purchasing a MacBook and regularly updating the OS, you may never have to reinstall it. If you have Internet access, the system can be easily reinstalled over the network. If circumstances require you to install macOS from a flash drive, you need to do it correctly.

Since 2013 Apple of the Year stopped selling the operating system to users. By purchasing any Mac, be it a laptop or a mini version, you get macOS for rent and are provided with free updates for the entire period of use of the device.

Find the icon on the Dock panel App store Store and open it.

On home page On the right side, under the account settings, there is a link that can take you to the site with the current OS. Currently latest version – 10.3 High Sierra.

Click on the “Download” button. The distribution weighs more than 5 GB, so the time it takes to receive it will depend on the speed of the connection used.

When the download is complete, the installer will automatically launch.

IN at the moment we don't need her. Since we are going to create an offline bootable media, we need to close it. Click on the program window so that the controls appear on the top panel. Select the marked item. A similar operation can be performed with the keyboard shortcut ⌘Q. In macOS, this is a standard shortcut that allows you to close any active window.

Old OS versions

If you want to install another, more old version operating system, you can also find them in the App Store. El Capitan, Yosemite or Mountain Lion are placed in the purchase section, provided they have been used before. This is due to the company's licensing policy. The operating systems shown in the screenshot are considered purchased, and subsequent ones are rented by the user from Apple.

Creating a bootable USB flash drive

To create installation disk on a MacBook, just use the terminal. macOS works perfectly with the Windows FS and does not require the installation of Transmac analogues. The NTFS format is supported out of the box in read mode, and FAT32 and exFAT are fully supported.

You will have to format the flash drive if it uses any Linux file system, for example, ext3. Before use removable disk In any case, it must be cleared of the information on it.

Formatting

Formatting in macOS is done using Disk Utility. You can find it by opening Launchpad in the Others folder or using Finder. Let's choose the second option as it is more convenient. Traditionally, a flash drive for modern operating systems should be at least 8 GB.

Open Finder and select “Applications” in the navigation area. Open the folder marked in the screenshot.

Select the specified utility.

We are looking for external drives. Select the name of the flash drive specified by the manufacturer, highlighting it. In the top control menu, the “Erase” button is activated. Click on it to open the next dialogue.

The system will automatically offer us the format and layout of the sections. They should match those shown in the screenshot. To clean and format the flash drive with the selected parameters, press the marked button.

Now on external media There is zero information left and you can write a distribution kit on it.

Recording a distribution

The file we downloaded from the App Store is not ISO way. This is a full-fledged installation wizard with its own set of utilities. For this reason, the system places it in the programs folder and not in downloads. From there we will record it onto external media.

We return to the “Utilities” folder and launch “Terminal”.

Enter the following write command on behalf of the system administrator:

sudo /Applications/Install\ macOS\ High\ Sierra.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia —volume /Volumes/Kingstone

Quotes are not required, but instead of Kingstone we indicate the name of the flash drive used.

Enter the password. The symbols will not be displayed. We complete the set by pressing the Enter button.

The system will ask you for confirmation to erase the selected volume. Type “Y” and press the enter key.

Before copying data, the system erases the flash drive.

The recording ends with the appearance information messages about the creation bootable media and transferring the data required by the installer to it.

The write command syntax varies for each distribution. Therefore, if you are planning to make a flash drive to reinstall macOS other than High Sierra, please visit the Apple support page provided. The finished command from there can be immediately copied to the terminal.

Installing macOS

By connecting the media to USB port, perform a reboot. Mac computers do not use the usual BIOS, so there is no additional configuration required.

Our task is to prevent the computer from booting from the SSD and launching the initial volume selection menu. Therefore, immediately upon reboot, hold down the “Option” key. Hold it until the dialogue shown in the screenshot appears. Windows volume will be present if it is installed on the partition Boot Camp. Here you will need to translate the specified arrow symbol from Macintosh HD to the installer icon.

Select the language in which menus and dialogs will be displayed.

For a “clean” installation, we need to open Disk Utility.

We select the volume on which we are going to install the OS and erase the data. The steps are similar to what we did when formatting the flash drive.

Close Disk Utility and select the marked item.

The OS installation wizard starts.

Select the Macintosh HD volume.

Fill out the fields to log in with your Apple ID details.

At this stage, you can transfer information from backup copy, if it was done. For a “clean” installation, select the specified item.

Then we just have to study license agreement and configure regional settings. During the installation process, the computer will reboot itself several times, after which you will be taken to the fresh macOS desktop.

In conclusion

As you can see, installing the Apple operating system is quite simple. No need to create bootable media third party programs or special knowledge, and ready-made commands can be found on the technical support website.

Video instructions

You can watch the entire system installation process in more detail in the video below.

To spread your software and operating rooms Apple systems uses the App Store. This is convenient, but sometimes downloading new OS takes long time. Especially if you have several Mac computers and you need to download the distribution kit on each device.

Much more effective create boot external drive to install macOS. This approach will take less time - I don’t have to go to the App Store from each computer, search for the operating system, download, enter the Apple ID and run the installer.

In this guide I will tell you how create boot disk with macOS Sierra. You will need a USB drive with 5 GB free space. We previously wrote about

Download the macOS Sierra installer

Launch the App Store and search for Sierra in the store. Click the Download button and the new OS will be downloaded to the Applications folder. Close the installation if it starts automatically after downloading.

If you have already updated your Mac to Sierra, the installer will be removed from the Applications folder. Download it again from the App Store and close it if it starts automatically.

Looking for an external drive

You can use any USB drive or hard drive to write the bootloader. I have used it with success various disks, including VisionTek 120GB USB 3.0 Pocket Solid State Drive and old 8GB Iomega Micro Mini Hard Drive.

Don't worry if your flash drive is not formatted for Mac. The flash drive will be automatically reformatted during the distribution process. Change your drive name to Untitled. You will need this for the next steps.

The fast and easy way

Below we will look creating a bootable USB storage with macOS Sierra using the Terminal. This is analogous to Unix systems. If you really don't want to use the Terminal, we offer you several free utilities, which will do all the work for you:

Install Disk Creator is an easy way to create an installation disk. The program will create a boot disk within a few minutes. From own experience I will say that the installation did not cause any problems. Also works well with older versions of OS X.
Diskmaker X– very popular app. I tried using DiskMaker X for our purpose and got an error. Stay tuned to the project to find out when support for macOS Sierra will be available.

Create an installation disk using Terminal

So, we have at our disposal an external drive, a beta installer for macOS Sierra, and also the Terminal. Don't worry if you've never worked with Terminal before. It's not difficult.

New operating room macOS systems Sierra, tested since June of this year. Apple announced this during the presentation and.

Like previous releases, macOS Sierra is intended for distribution through the store Mac App Store. With a little effort, you can prepare yourself a bootable USB flash drive with an operating system. This will make the installation process more flexible. The process for creating a bootable drive with macOS Sierra is somewhat different from previous systems, although not much more complicated. Before proceeding, we suggest that you familiarize yourself with the requirements.

Requirements:

USB flash drive 16 GB or more.
Downloaded macOS Sierra Installer image.
A computer running OS X El Capitan.

If everything is ready, you can start.

How to Create a Bootable USB Drive with macOS Sierra

Step 1: Download the “Install macOS Sierra” installation file to your computer.

Step 2: Launch Disk Utility from the Utilities folder.

Step 3: Connect the USB flash drive to your computer. It is worth considering that the disk will be formatted, so it should not contain important data.

Step 4: Select the USB drive in the left panel and click the Erase button on the top panel.

Step 5: Rename the flash drive as SierraInstaller (or any other name without spaces). If a different name is used, the command below will need to be modified. Click the Erase button.

Step 6: Once you have prepared the flash drive, open the Terminal application from the Utilities folder and run the following command:

sudo /Applications/Install\ macOS\ Sierra.app/Contents/Resources/
createinstallmedia –volume /Volumes/Untitled –applicationpath /Applications/Install\ macOS\ Sierra.app –nointeraction &&say Done

Check your spelling. The most common mistake is the absence of a double dash before the word nointeraction. The command should look like this:

Step 7: Enter your account password and the process of creating a bootable USB drive with macOS Sierra will begin.

After 10-15 minutes, Terminal will complete creating the drive.

"Erasing Disk: 0%... 10%... 20%... 30%...100%...
Copying installer files to disk…
Copy complete.
Making disk bootable...
Copying boot files...
Copy complete.
Done."

Step 8: Close Terminal.

Step 9: Restart your computer with the USB flash drive installed while holding Alt (Option) on your keyboard.

Step 10: You are ready to install macOS Sierra.

At WWDC 2017 on Monday, Apple announced next version software platform. Almost immediately it became available to registered developers.

The following guide will help you create bootable usb drive with macOS 10.13 High Sierra, which allows you to install the update on multiple computers without downloading again, run clean install, and also save a protected copy in case of possible problems.

To create a bootable flash drive with macOS High Sierra will need a copy of the macOS 10.13 High Sierra beta and external storage 8 GB capacity. It is worth noting that at the moment the OS is only available in a test version for developers. Those who are not enrolled in the testing program should wait for the public beta.

How to create a bootable USB flash drive with macOS High Sierra:

Step 1: Download the High Sierra Beta installation file and make sure it is located in the Utilities folder. By default, all programs from the Mac App Store are downloaded here. If the file was downloaded to another folder, it needs to be moved. For convenience, it is recommended to leave the standard name Install macOS 10.13 Beta.

Step 2: Connect the USB drive to your Mac. If it is not formatted, this must be done using Disk Utility. It is worth noting that the disk should not contain important data and files, as they will all be deleted.

Step 3. For convenience, let's call the flash drive “USB”. Make sure that there are no other drives with the same name connected to your computer.

Step 4: Open the Terminal application and enter the following command to move the installation file to the USB flash drive and make it bootable:

sudo /Applications/Install\ macOS\ 10.13\ Beta.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia –volume /Volumes/USB –applicationpath /Applications/Install\ macOS\ 10.13\ Beta.app –nointeraction

If you used other names for the installation file and disk, you need to edit the command and enter them into the appropriate addresses. If the installation file has not been moved to the Utilities application, you will need to change the command to its current location.

Step 5: Enter your account password, which will begin the process of creating a bootable USB drive with macOS High Sierra.

During this time, the USB drive will not be accessible on the desktop. The entire process may take 10 to 15 minutes. Once all the files have been copied, the disk will appear on the desktop again, and the Terminal will indicate that the process is complete.

How to use a bootable USB flash drive with macOS 10.13 High Sierra:

Step 1. To install macOS 10.13 High Sierra from a flash drive, boot the computer with the USB drive connected to it while holding Alt key(Option).

Step 2: On the boot volume selection screen, select the drive called Install macOS 10.13 Beta. After this, the installation window for the beta version of the new operating system will appear on the screen.