Carbon Copy cloner is your best option. Just create a bootable backup with it; and boot to the USB stick by holding ALT key when starting up. Bootable USB Stick - macOS X El Capitan 10.11 - Full OS Install, Reinstall, Recovery and Upgrade SANDISK USB FLASH DRIVE 2.0/3.1 - 16GB - 5 years warranty Latest certificate (expires These USBs are NOT produced by Apple. How to make a bootable El Capitan Installer. Download and keep a copy of the ‘Install OS X El Capitan’ App. (Download from App store but make a copy of it before you install it as the Apple Installer deletes it after you use it.) Put it in your ‘Applications’ folder. Format your blank USB (8GB is a good size) as Apple OS X Extended. Make sure to boot from the USB device again, and select Boot OS X Install from Install OS X El Capitan once again, in verbose mode. The installation is a two-part process that continues once you re-boot into the USB drive. Finally, after about 25 more minutes, OS X El Capitan should be successfully installed on the target drive. Created a bootable USB with El Capitan installer. Booted from it, erased my MBP (mid 2009), clean install from USB installer. Decided to use migration assistant, most apps not working plus all the clutter from pre clean install. Decided to do another clean install but MBP won't boot from USB and uses the recovery version instead.
Whenever new OS X release comes to Mac users, it is important to create a Bootable USB as a backup option to clean install. Most of the time upgrade works well, but there are chances your battery performance go poor or OS X corrupt due to apps installed on the computer. That is when we need to perform Clean Installation of OS X as the final troubleshooting method.
Download OS X El Capitan only from Mac App Store which is available right now. Simply launch App Store on your mac computer and you will see El Capitan already featured with free download button.
OS X El Capitan featured with tons of new features and improvements to existing features. I have installed it on my iMac and Macbook Pro, and so far it is great. As i mostly use my macbook pro at desk, didn’t notice any battery performance problems. There are reports from Macbook Pro and Macbook Air users who have upgraded to El Capitan regarding battery issues.
Another important step to do after downloading the OS X El Capitan is taking backup of the installation file. By default the location of the file set to /Applications folder and the file automatically deleted after completing the OS X upgrade. So it is very important for you to take a backup of the file named “Install OS X El Capitan” from “Applications” folder to create bootable USB or use it later.
Go to Applications folder by opening Finder once the download completed and OS X El Capitan installation wizard pop up comes on your desktop screen.
At this point, copy the file “Install OS X El Capitan” and paste it any folder on your hard disk drive. Now you have the copy of latest OS X released by Apple and you can use it whenever you want and share it with your friends saving 6 gigabytes of bandwidth for them.
Create OS X El Capitan Bootable USB
We are now ready to create the bootable usb disk drive of OS X El Capitan. All you have do is, follow the couple of steps suggested here and you are ready to install El Capitan on any mac computers.
Step 1: Connect USB Disk Drive to your mac computer and Open “Disk Utility” by typing it on Spotlight (CMD + Space Bar) or by going to “Applications – Utilities – Disk Utility”.
Step 2: Select the USB Drive from the list and on the Right side, select “Erase” tab and rename the USB drive as “Untitled” and click on Erase to perform the operation.
Step 3: Now the USB Drive is ready for OS X El Capitan installation. Make sure the copy of “Install OS X El Capitan” is there on /Applications folder.
Step 4: Launch “Terminal” and copy, paste the following command in Terminal then press Enter.
Step 5: Terminal will prompt for Root password, enter the root password and press enter. USB Disk formatting will start now followed by the copying of files required to create bootable os x el capitan usb drive.
It will take 5 to 10 minutes maximum and the Bootable USB Disk of OS X El Capitan will be ready for use.
If you don’t want to follow these steps and looking for an app to automate all these tasks and get the USB ready with OS X El Capitan then consider using, DiskMaker X which is compatible with OS X El Capitan as well. Download DiskMaker X 5 which comes around 7 MB and create the bootable usb drive easily.
Thanks for reading, and feel free comment below if you have any queries. Have a wonderful day, and don’t forget to share this post with your friends and followers across Twitter, Facebook and Google+.
If you use pkgutil to expand the InstallMacOSX.pkg it opens to three items, the Distribution file, InstallMacOSX.pkg and Resources. You can alter the Distribution file to ignore the supported platform check, see below.
Creating the Install OS X El Capitan.app on a mac that came with a newer OS than El Capitan.
Download the InstallMacOSX.dmg from Section 4 of How To Upgrade To El Capitan
Double-click to open InstallMacOSX.dmg to Install MacOSX.pkg.
Drag InstallMacOSX.pkg to the Desktop.
Open Terminal, enter the text
A folder will be created on the Desktop after a while with the contents of the .pkg file.
In there you will see an item called Distribution, Control-click on that and select Open With
go to Other and select Text Edit.
When the file opens scroll down to the section that reads,
function isSupportedPlatform(){
type in at the end return true; so it now reads as,
function isSupportedPlatform(){return true;
Now click Save and close the document.
Go back to Terminal and enter the text,
press Return, after several minutes, be patient, (check to see if the prompt has returned to Terminal) a new package will be created on the Desktop.
When created double-click on that and an installation window will open where you will now convert the
Bootable Usb Mac Os X El Capitan
new InstallElCapitan.pkg to the Install OS X El Capitan.app which will be placed in your Applications folder.
You can now create a bootable USB using the install app and createinstallmedia,
If you have the time I would be grateful if you could give this a trial, it works here on my mac, but I would like confirmation from yourself or any others reading this that the procedure works on macs that came with macOS Sierra or newer pre-installed. Oh and tell me if my description of the procedure is easy to follow and understand..
Os X El Capitan Create Bootable Usb
Jan 15, 2020 12:58 AM