Install Macos Yosemite From Usb

Prepare USB drive for OS X Yosemite. Open Disk Utility from 'Applications' 'Utilities' or press 'cmd+space' keys form keyboard to find 'Disk Utility'. Plug the external USB drive into Mac (make sure you save your stuff from it). Once you attached the USB drive, it will shown on the left panel of Disk Utility. How To Clean Install OS X Yosemite. Step 1: First and foremost, download OS X Yosemite from the Mac App Store; it’s absolutely free. Download OS X 10.10 Yosemite Final For Free Right Now! Step 2: Once the download process is complete, you will now have to create a bootable OS X Yosemite USB drive, the steps for which are outlined here: Step 3. Bootable USB Installers for OS X Mavericks, Yosemite, El Capitan, and Sierra. First, review this introductory article: Create a bootable installer for macOS. Second, read this How To outline for creating a bootable macOS installer. Simply use the Terminal command by copying and pasting the command line for the version of macOS from the list below.

  1. Os X 10.10 Yosemite Download
  2. Os Yosemite Download
  3. Mac Os Yosemite Download
  4. Install Os X Yosemite From Usb Windows
  5. Mac Os X Yosemite Installer
  6. How To Install Mac Os Yosemite From Usb

Update: Go to Install macOS Sierra Using Bootable USB Flash Drive if you want to install macOS 10.12 Sierra instead.

Update 2: The instructions below will work to manually create a Mac OS X 10.11 El Capitan USB installation drive. I needed to upgrade my sister’s 2008 Macbook Pro and found that the existing Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard did not support the “createinstallmedia” tool; I got a “Failed to start erase of disk due to error (-9999, 0)” error. I followed the instructions below to successfully create a bootable installer for Mac OS X 10.11 El Capitan, which is the last version to support the 2008 Core 2 Duo Macbook Pro.

In this post, I will go over instructions on how to create a bootable USB flash drive containing the Mac OS X 10.10 Yosemite installer. These instructions will also work for Mac OS X 10.9 Mavericks (excluding a Yosemite-specific step) and differ significantly from the instructions for creating a Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard installer. You will need an 8GB USB flash drive for Mac OS X Yosemite or Mavericks.

I tried several methods which failed to create a bootable USB flash drive before finding one that succeeded. The instructions I found that worked, using Disk Utility, were located at How to Make a Bootable OS X Mavericks USB Install Drive and How to Create a Bootable Install USB Drive of Mac OS X 10.10 Yosemite.

Download the Mac OS X 10.10 Yosemite

First, download the latest Mac OS X version, which is 10.10 Yosemite. It is the version currently available for download from the “App Store”. (If you want an earlier version like Mac OS X 10.9 Mavericks, you’ll need to get it from elsewhere.)

Launch “App Store” and search for “OS X Yosemite”. Download it. (It is 5.16GB in size.)

New mac os yosemite

Note: If you run the Yosemite installer to upgrade your Mac, the downloaded installer 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” app and run this command to move the downloaded installer app to your user’s “Downloads” folder:

sudomv/Applications/Install OS Yosemite.app/ ~/Downloads/

Create Bootable USB Flash Drive Installer

By default, the Finder will hide system files which we will need to see. Run these commands in the “Terminal” app to expose the hidden files:

# Configure Finder to show hidden system files.
defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE
# Close all Finder instances (and re-launch so settings take effect).
killall Finder

Prepare the USB flash drive:

  1. Plug in a USB flash drive of size 8GB or larger.
  2. Launch the “Disk Utility” to format the USB Flash drive.
  3. On the left-hand pane, select the USB drive (not the partition under it, if any).
  4. Click on the “Erase” tab, select “Mac OS Extended (Journaled)” for “Format” and input a name like “Install Yosemite” (or anything because this name will be overwritten later).
  5. Click the “Erase…” button at the bottom and then the “Erase” button in the popup dialog. This format operation should take less than a minute to complete.

Restore the Yosemite installation image to the USB flash drive:

  1. Launch the Finder and locate the “Install OS Yosemite.app” file. Right-click (hold the “control” key and click) on it and select “Show Package Contents”.
  2. Open Contents, then SharedSupport, and double-click on the InstallESD.dmg (disk image) file to mount it. A volume called “OS X Install ESD” will show up on the desktop and under DEVICES in the Finder.
  3. In the “OS X Install ESD” volume, right-click on the “BaseSystem.dmg” file and select “Open” to mount it. (Double-click won’t perform any action because it is a hidden file.)
  4. Use Disk Utility to clone the “BaseSystem.dmg” to the USB flash drive:
    1. Select the “BaseSystem.dmg” in the left-hand pane and click on the “Restore” tab. The “Source” field will be populated with “BaseSystem.dmg”.
    2. Drag the “Install Yosemite” partition under the USB flash drive to the “Destination” field.
    3. Click the Restore button and then the Erase button.
    4. The USB flash drive will be written with the contents of “BaseSystem.dmg” file. Depending on the speed of your USB flash drive, it may take several minutes or longer to complete this operation.
    5. Once complete, the “Install Yosemite” partition will be renamed to “OS X Base System”.
  5. Use the Finder to navigate to the USB flash drive. You will see two “OS X Base System” volumes in the Finder’s left-hand pane. The USB flash drive is the last one.
  6. Under the USB flash drive’s “OS X Base System” partition, open the “System/Installation” folder. You will see an alias file named “Packages”. Delete it because we will replace it with a “Packages” folder below.
  7. Use a second Finder window to open the “OS X Install ESD” volume. (To open a second Finder window, you can use the Finder menu’s “File/New Finder Window” command.)
  8. Copy the “Packages” folder from the “OS X Install ESD” volume to the USB flash drive’s “System/Installation” folder.
  9. Required for Yosemite (not required for Mavericks): Copy the “BaseSystem.chunklist” and “BaseSystem.dmg” files from the “OS X Install ESD” volume to the USB flash drive’s root “/” folder. If you don’t do this, you will get an “undefined error 0” when attempting to install Yosemite.
  10. The USB flash drive is now complete. You can use it to boot a Mac to install Mac OS X 10.10 Yosemite.
  11. Unmount all the Yosemite installer volumes by ejecting them; you must eject “OS X Base System” before “OS X Install ESD”.

Re-configure the Finder to hide system files. Run these commands in the “Terminal” app:

# Configure Finder to not show hidden system files.
defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles FALSE
# Close all Finder instances (and re-launch so settings take effect).
killall Finder

Boot With USB Flash Drive

To boot a Mac with the USB flash drive:

  1. Insert the USB flash drive.
  2. While holding the “option/alt” key down, turn on the Mac to display the boot Startup Manager.
  3. You should see one or two icons, one for the internal hard drive and/or another called “OS X Base System” for the USB flash drive. (The internal hard drive may not be visible if it does not have a bootable partition installed.)
    • Note: If you don’t see the USB flash drive’s “OS X Base System”, 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.
  4. Select the “OS X Base System” and hit the “return/enter” key to boot from the USB flash drive.

Hopefully, this post will help you to create your own bootable USB flash drive installer for Mac OS X 10.10 Yosemite or Mac OS X 10.9 Mavericks.

Mac OS users who are already running Mavericks on their desktop computers are now eligible for free upgrade to OS X 10.10 – Yosemite.

Those who are facing performance issues with direct upgrade via App store or installing OS X for the first time on their Macs can follow a simple step-by-step guide to perform a clean install of Yosemite using Disk Utility.

Before we delve into the detailed process of clean installing OS X Yosemite on Macs, there are a few things that need to be taken care of.

Prerequisites

a) Ensure your Mac is compatible with OS X Yosemite. These are the supported devices:

  • iMac (Mid 2007 or newer)
  • MacBook (Late 2008 Aluminium, or Early 2009 or newer)
  • MacBook Pro (Mid/Late 2007 or newer)
  • MacBook Air (Late 2008 or newer)
  • Mac mini (Early 2009 or newer)
  • Mac Pro (Early 2008 or newer)
  • Xserve (Early 2009)

b) Back up important data and settings (photos, videos, music files, documents and the like) on your Mac to an external hard drive. You can do this by using the Time Machine feature in Mac OS X, or third-party software such as Carbon Copy Cloner.

Os X 10.10 Yosemite Download

c) Create a bootable USB flash drive with a storage size of at least 8GB.

d) Download OS X 10.10 Yosemite Final from the Mac App Store and save it to the Applications folder – its default location.

How to Create Bootable USB Flash Drive

First, create bootable USB flash drive. Here is how you do it, courtesy of Redmond Pie:

Os Yosemite Download

  • Plug in your USB drive into the computer and open Disk Utility (in Applications).
  • Select the USB drive from the left sidebar and click on Erase tab.
  • Choose Mac OS Extended (Journaled) in the format box and let the name be Untitled (default).
  • Now click on Erase button and wait until the format process completes.
  • Then choose Partition tab and select 1 Partition from Partition Layout dropdown menu. Click on Option and ensure GUID Partition Table is selected as the partition scheme, with its name set to Untitled.
  • After downloading the OS X 10.10 Yosemite instakker from the Mac App Store, just quit the installer and set the downloaded file's name to Install OS X Yosemite.app.
  • Launch the Terminal app (in Applications/Utilities) and type or paste the following command in, and then hit Enter:

sudo /Applications/Install OS X Yosemite.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia –volume /Volumes/Untitled –applicationpath /Applications/Install OS X Yosemite.app –nointeraction

  • This will create the bootable USB flash drive. This takes between 10-20 minutes. Do not interrupt the Terminal or eject the flash drive during the process. Once the process completes, you will see the message 'Copy Complete. Done.'

Mac Os Yosemite Download

The OS X Yosemite bootable USB flash drive will be ready for use and you can start the clean installation process.

How to Clean Install OS X Yosemite on Your Mac

Step 1: Ensure the bootable USB flash drive is plugged into your Mac and restart the computer. As soon as the start-up chime plays, press the Option key (Alt).

Step 2: Choose the USB drive on the start-up drive selection screen and hit Enter/Return on the keyboard.

Step 3: Wait until the Yosemite installer appears on screen. This could take a few seconds or minutes.

Step 4: Click on Disk Utility and then hit Continue.

Step 5: Click on Macintosh HD from the left hand-side pane and then hit Erase tab on the top-right portion of the window. Leave all the settings at their default values and then hit Erase button at the bottom right. This will wipe all files stored on your startup hard drive.

Install Os X Yosemite From Usb Windows

Step 6: When the erasing process is complete, return to the first screen where you selected Disk Utility. Now click on Install OS X and then hit Continue.

Mac Os X Yosemite Installer

Step 7: Choose the Macintosh HD partition you erased in step 5 and then click Install.

If you have followed all the steps correctly, your computer should now boot right into the newly installed operating system, OS X Yosemite, and you could cherish its stunning new UI.

How To Install Mac Os Yosemite From Usb

(Source: Redmond Pie)

How to Clean Install OS X Yosemite via Bootable USB Flash Drive

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