With a bootable Ubuntu USB stick, you can: Install or upgrade Ubuntu, even on a Mac. How to Create a Bootable MAC OS USB Stick IN WINDOWS In this video How to Create Bootable macOS Catalina ISO & DMG file on a MAC? How to create Bootabl. Download: macOS Big Sur, macOS Catalina, macOS Mojave or macOS High Sierra These will be downloaded to your Applications folder as an app called Install macOS version name. If the installer opens after download, quit it without continuing the installation.

Erase your startup drive in Disk Utility Go back to the original Disk Utility screen (If you can’t return to Disk Utility, restart your Mac and hold down the. Click Install macOS and choose to install it from the selected USB drive. Click on “Install macOS”. Installing macOS on a USB Drive 1. Format your USB drive as APFS or JHFS+. Choose the GUID Partition Table or GPT as your partition table. Download the version of macOS you want to install. Unless you have a specific reason to install an older version of. Open the installer you downloaded.

To perform a clean installation of macOS Sierra (basically, Mac OS X 10.12), I recommend using a bootable USB flash drive containing the macOS Sierra installer. Below are the steps I took to create the bootable USB flash drive and how I used it to install macOS Sierra.

Note: The macOS Sierra Disk Utility and installer appears to be more buggy and much slower than previous versions. The best advice for installing macOS Sierra is to try again and be very patient (if you expect an operation to complete in 5 minutes, then give it at least 50 minutes).

Download macOS Sierra Installer

The macOS Sierra installer is available from the Mac App Store. Run the “App Store” application, search for “macOS Sierra”, and download it. It will save the installer as an “/Applications/Install macOS Sierra.app” file (about 4.97GB in size).

Note: If you run the macOS Sierra installer to upgrade your Mac, the downloaded file will be deleted automatically after the upgrade is completed. To keep that file, you will want to move it out of the Applications folder so it won’t be deleted after an upgrade. Launch the “Terminal” application and run this command to move the downloaded installer to your user’s “Downloads” folder:

How To Install Mac Os From Usb Stick

If you are paranoid (doesn’t hurt), you can verify that the installer file was downloaded correctly by verify its checksum. Run the “Terminal” application and this command:

Format USB Flash Drive

The macOS Sierra installer takes up 5.1GB of space on the USB flash drive, so you will need a flash drive with a capacity of 8GB or greater.

Note: If the flash drive is mounted under “/Volumes” successfully when you plug it in, you can skip the following steps to reformat the flash drive. This is because the script we run to create the bootable drive will reformat the flash drive as an initial step. Because I am paranoid, I recommend reformatting the USB flash drive manually anyhow.

Format the USB flash drive using these steps:

1. Plug the USB flash drive into your Mac.
2. Launch the “Disk Utility” application.
3. On the left-hand pane, select the USB drive (not the partition under it, if any).
4. Click on the “Erase” tab (or button at the top).
   1. Input a name like “Sierra” (this name will be overwritten later).
   2. Select “Mac OS Extended (Journaled)” for “Format”.
   3. Select “Master Boot Record” for “Scheme”.
   4. Click the “Erase…” button at the bottom. Click the “Erase” button in the warning popup dialog if you get one.
      • The format operation may take several minutes to complete. (USB 2.0 and large capacity drives will take longer.) After the format completes, the partition will be mounted under “/Volumes/Sierra” (or whatever name you selected above).
      • Note: Under macOS Sierra, the Erase function will fail if the USB drive’s partition is mounted. You can manually unmount the partition before running Erase. Or you can run Erase twice; the first time will unmount the partition and fail, and the second time will actually do the format (which will succeed).
5. Close the “Disk Utility” application.

Create Bootable USB Flash Drive Installer

To create the bootable USB macOS Sierra installer, run the “Terminal” application and this command:

Update: For macOS 10.14 Mojave (and its predecessor, macOS 10.13 High Sierra), the createinstallmedia command no longer requires the “–applicationpath” and “–nointeraction” flags, so omit them. The command becomes just “createinstallmedia –volume /Volumes/Mojave”.

Note: If the createinstallmedia command returns a “Failed to start erase of disk due to error (-9999, 0)” error, then your current Mac OS X version does not fully support the createinstallmedia tool. Instead, create the USB installation drive manually using instructions from Bootable USB Flash Drive to Install Mac OS X 10.10 Yosemite.

The “createinstallmedia” program will erase the USB flash drive, create a new partition named “Install macOS Sierra”, and copy the installation files to that partition. The output will look like:

The program will pause at the “Copying installer files to disk…” output line above. This step took 20-30 minutes with my Kingston 16GB USB 2.0 flash drive. Yours may take a shorter or longer time. I recommend giving it at least an hour, maybe two, before giving up.

Note: Mac hardware is very finicky about USB flash drives. Initially, I used a Corsair 32GB USB 3.0 drive; however, when I held down the Option key to try to boot with it, the Mac would freeze with a black startup screen. The Kingston 16GB USB 2.0 drive did not have this problem. So if you enounter issues (when erasing and copying) or weirdness (when booting), consider changing to another brand of USB flash drive. If you don’t have another drive, consider at least testing the flash drive to make sure it is not bad or corrupted (“First Aid” in “Disk Utility” is the minimum; google for more powerful tools).

Boot With USB Flash Drive

Note: I recommending connecting the Mac to its AC power adapter before beginning the macOS Sierra installation. The installation may take a long time (an hour or more) and you don’t want the battery to die in the middle.

To boot a Mac with the USB flash drive:

1. Shutdown the Mac.
2. Insert the USB flash drive.
3. While holding the “option/alt” key down, turn on the Mac to display the boot Startup Manager.
4. You should see one or more icons, one of which should be called “Install macOS Sierra” for the USB flash drive. (The internal hard drive may not be visible if it does not have a valid, bootable partition installed.)
   • Note: If you don’t see the USB flash drive’s “Install macOS Sierra”, try removing and re-inserting the USB flash drive while viewing the Startup Manager screen. The USB flash drive should then appear after a few seconds.
5. Select the “Install macOS Sierra” (with left/right arrow keys) and hit the “return/enter” key to boot from the USB flash drive.

It may take 5-10 minutes or longer to load the installer from the USB flash drive. Sometimes the progress bar may appear to be frozen… just be patient. I would give it at least 30-60 minutes to load before giving up.

Format the Hard Drive

When the installer finishes loading, you will see a “macOS Utilities” window appear. Do the following to format the internal hard drive:

1. Click on the “Disk Utility” option and click the “Continue” button on the bottom to launch the “Disk Utility” application.
2. On the left-hand pane, select the hard drive (not the partition under it, if any).
3. Click on the “Erase” button at the top.
   1. Input a name like “macOS”.
   2. Select “Mac OS Extended (Journaled)” for “Format”.
   3. Select “GUID Partition Map” for “Scheme”.
   4. Click the “Erase…” button at the bottom.
      • For SSD (Solid State Drive), the format operation may take less than a minute to complete. For mechanical hard drive, it may several minutes to hours, depending upon the size, speed, and condition of your hard drive.
      • Note: Again, the Erase function will fail if the hard drive’s partition is mounted. You can manually unmount the partition before running Erase. Or you can run Erase twice; the first time will unmount the partition and fail, and the second time will actually do the format (which will succeed).
4. Close the “Disk Utility” application.

Note: Now and then, I noticed the output of the Erase seems to erroneously double the size of the hard drive. For a 128GB hard drive, the graph shows 120.88GB macOS (in blue) and 120.37 GB Unformatted (in red). I think it is just a user interface bug because when I close Disk Utility and re-open it, the graph then only shows the 120.88GB macOS (in blue).

Install macOS Sierra

Back at the “macOS Utilities” window, do the following to begin the macOS Sierra installation process:

1. Click on the “Install macOS” option and click the “Continue” button.
2. The “macOS Sierra” installer’s splash screen will appear. Click the “Continue” button.
3. Click on the “Agree” button to agree to the license. A popup confirmation window will appear; click on the popup’s “Agree” button.
4. Select the hard drive and click the “Install” button.

Note: You may encounter strange hardware behavior. On my 13 inch Macbook Pro Retina, the macOS Sierra installer turned the fan on to maximum for the whole duration of the installation. Thankfully, once it finished and rebooted, the fan turned off and stayed off.

Bootable Macos Usb

The macOS Sierra installer tries to be helpful by telling you how long it will take. Unfortunately, it lies. You should take whatever remaining time it tells you and multiple by 10 (for minutes) or 100 (for seconds). If it says “6 minutes remaining”, that could mean 60 minutes or one hour remaining. Worse, if it says “6 seconds remaining”, you may be staring at that message for 600 seconds or one hour.

The best solution is to be patient. Go grab a bite to eat and watch a movie. Take a long nap or better yet, sleep your 8 hours. I would wait at least 4 hours before giving up.

Note: You can display the installer’s log window (using the menu or pressing Cmd+L). I didn’t find this helpful at all. Even for a successful install, numerous errors are logged; I don’t know what is a critical or non-critical error. And often, you won’t see a progress/status log output for a long time, easily 20-30 minutes. Not seeing any new log statements does not mean that the installer froze. So the logs didn’t do anything for me.

What Does Giving Up Mean?

Giving up means you have accepted defeat. The next step is to retreat and try again. Some suggestions on how to proceed:

• Reset your Mac by doing the following:
  1. Reset the SMC (see step 3 under the “Reset the SMC on Mac notebook computers” section).
  2. Reset the NVRAM (aka PRAM).
  3. Run the Apple Hardware Diagnostic or Test to make sure you don’t have a hardware failure.
  4. Finally, retry the macOS Sierra install.
• Use a different USB port on the Mac.
• Use another brand of USB flash drive.
• Delete and re-download the macOS Sierra installer (especially if you downloaded it a long while ago). Even if the checksum is okay, you may want to re-download in case there is a newer version of the installer with a bug fix for your very problem.
• Download an older Mac OS X version, say Mac OS X 10.11 El Capitan, install that, and then upgrade to macOS Sierra. If you know the Mac OS X version which came with your Mac originally, consider downloading (if you still have access) and installing that version first.
• Use the Mac Recovery System to download and install the original OS version that came with your Mac. Then upgrade from that to macOS Sierra.
• Buy a more recent model Mac (at most a couple of years old). It may be that your current Mac is too old or slow to support macOS Sierra. It’s okay to keep running an old Mac OS version. (For example, if I had a Core 2 Duo Mac, I would not run anything later than Mac OS X 10.9 Mavericks on it.)

Hopefully, this post will help you to do a fresh installation of macOS Sierra.

Some info above taken from:

After successfully created a macOS bootable USB, the next step is how to use it to install macOS from external USB drive. This is not normal case because macOS is very stable and have less bugs/virus than Windows PC. So many Mac users don't know how to perform a clean install of macOS on their Mac when the device was broken or could not boot into desktop.

Please don't worry. We will share detailed steps on how to install macOS/Mac OS X from an USB drive. Even you had issues during this process, it is not thing to be afriad as we have offered the troubleshooting guide as well.

How to Install macOS on Mac from USB Drive (Normal Way)

If the target Mac computer already had a macOS or OS X on it, then installing macOS from USB is straightforward and this is called the normal way.

Step 1: Insert the macOS bootable USB drive on a USB port of Mac computer.

Step 2: Shut down the Mac and wait for 1-2 minutes. This will make sure the Mac is powered off.

Step 3: Hold the Power and Option key simultaneously for 15 seconds. This will bring up the Startup Manager on Mac.

How To Install Macos On Pc

Step 4: You will see all bootable devices attached to this Mac, including Macintosh HD and external USB or DVD. Click the drive name of your macOS bootable USB to start the installation process.

Step 5: Agree the terms and conditions and wait for the installation process to be done.

How to Install macOS on Mac from USB Drive (Advanced)

If the drive was not partitioned or the partition table was corrupted, then you can not install macOS on Mac with the normal way. You have to boot Mac into Recovery mode and format the hard drive or SSD to Apple file system first.

Step 1: Shut down your Mac and press the Power key to turn on the Mac; then immediately press Command and R keys.

Step 2: You will be directed to the macOS utility section and here you need to select 'Disk Utility' to format the USB drive. From the Disk Utility app, select Mac drive name under Internal section and then click on the 'Erase' button.

Step 3: You will get a couple of options from the Format. Pleasec choose APFS (macOS) or Mac OS Extended (Journaled) for old version Mac OS X.

Step 4: After the completion of the formatting process, go back to the macOS utility section and this time, select 'Reinstall macOS'.

Step 5: Further, go to the Startup Manager, move to the External drive section, and select your bootable macOS USB drive.

Step 6: Now, the configuration of MacOS will start. As soon as the process starts, it will provide Terms and Agreement page and your job is to agree with the same and then click on the continue button.

Step 7: After that, click on the 'Continue' button to start the installation process. This will take 30-45 minutes and once it gets completed, restart Mac.

Step 8: As you are using the fresh copy of MacOS on Mac machine, so you need to set up the OS and for that connect the Mac with the Wi-Fi and then sign in with the Apple account.

Step 9: After signing in, you can access the several products of Apple such as iCloud, DropBox and many more.

Quick Troubleshooting Tips if You Got Stuck during MacOS Installation

Could not write installation information to disk

If you see the message like 'Could Not Write Installation Information to Disk' when you are trying to install the OS, it means, some important files are missing from the bootable USB device. Mostly, this error happens when you download Mac OS file from an unauthorized site.

You can fix this issue just by downloading the original OS file from the Apple store and then create a fresh bootable USB using the same.

Compatibility error

If you are upgrading the OS X after having an older version, you can get the compatibility error message. In such case, just cross-check the system requirement for the OS you want to install on your Mac system.

You can fix this issue just by downloading the original OS file from the Apple store and then create a fresh bootable USB using the same.

macOS could not be installed on your Computer

If you see the error message similar to 'macOS Could Not Be Installed on Your Computer' that means, either your system is not compatible or the Date and Time settings in your system is not up to date..

To resolve the problem, first, check the system combability for the OS X. If it's fine and still you are facing the error, then just update the system Time & Date with the option of 'Local Apple time server'.

Application is damaged, can't be used to install macOS

You the message 'application is damaged, can't be used to install macOS' appear on your screen, it means the OS certificated has been expired. And so, you won't be able to proceed further for installation.

The simple solution is; you need to create a fresh bootable USB by downloading the MacOS file from its official website.

MacOS couldn't install on this computer

Create A Bootable Macos Usb

Sometimes, the thirty-party tool which you use to create a bootable USB is the culprit. If the OS files will not be copied successfully using the bootable tool, then you may see the message like 'MacOS couldn't install on this computer'.

Install Os X El Capitan From Usb Stick

In this case, you should avoid using a third party bootable tool despite you should create a bootable USB with the help of command.

Conclusion

The above tutorial covers most of the issues you could come across during the installation process. If you had other issues not mentioned in this article, please contact us and our technical team will help you fix it.