Download Mac Os Sierra Bootable Usb



Since this is the first version of the public release of macOS Sierra, you might want to create a separate partition on your Mac and install Sierra as a dual boot system with Mac OS X El Capitan. That way, you can play around with Sierra and easily switch back to El Capitan if you end up not liking the new operating system. Clean Install macOS High Sierra using a Bootable USB. Sometimes we need a clean installation of our operating system. But doing it the Apple’s way that is online can frustrate us like hell. So what you can do is you can download a full installer, and then you can create a bootable USB. The following information will be helpful in case if you choose to use macOS High Sierra with the bootable hard drive: Step 1: If there is a trouble with the current hard disk, and you wish to solve it or use the new version of the OS, then plug the bootable external drive to the Mac. How to use macOS High Sierra USB installer. To use the USB installer, simply insert the USB drive and start up or restart your computer whilst holding the Option (⌥) key. This will take you to the Mac’s built-in Startup Manager that lets you pick a startup drive for the computer at boot time. It should look like this. MacOS Sierra 10.12 bootable USB for Intel PCs (16A323) MAC DOWNLOAD 1.66GB OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion bootable USB for Intel PCs 4.68GB OS X Yosemite 10.10 bootable USB for Intel PCs.rar 5.13GB.

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).

Mac Os High Sierra Dmg Bootable Usb Download

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:

sudomv/Applications/Install macOS Sierra.app/ ~/Downloads/

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:

hdiutil verify /Applications/Install macOS Sierra.app/Contents/SharedSupport/InstallESD.dmg
# If successful, the last output line should read:
# hdiutil: verify: checksum of '/Applications/Install macOS Sierra.app/Contents/SharedSupport/InstallESD.dmg' is VALID

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:

# The --volume value is the mounted USB flash drive partition; in this case, named /Volumes/Sierra
sudo/Applications/Install macOS Sierra.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume/Volumes/Sierra --applicationpath/Applications/Install macOS Sierra.app --nointeraction
# You will be prompted for your user's administrative password.

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:

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

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.
Mac

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.

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.)
Download mac os sierra bootable usb installer

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

Some info above taken from:

If you’re still using a Mac OS X the time will come when your computer won’t boot, or a problem may arise where you can’t take control of the device, and booting from an OS X installation media will be required.

This is why it’s recommended that you make a Mac OS X bootable USB when your Mac is in working conditions. However, if you find yourself on a scenario where your device (iMac, MacBook Pro, Air, Mac Pro or Mini) is not responding and you happen to have a Windows 10 device, then you can still be able to make a USB bootable installation media for your Mac OS X to reinstall the operating system using the Recovery Assistant.

These instructions will also work for Windows users who are running Mac OS X on a virtual machine and need to upgrade to the latest version. For instance, to OS X Yosemite.

Requirements

Before you dive into this guide, you’ll need a few things:

  • A broken Mac computer with Mac OS X.
  • A trial copy of the TransMac software.
  • One high quality USB flash drive with 16GB of storage.
  • A copy of Apple’s macOS (DMG file).

Now that you have all the necessary ingredients, you’re ready to make a Mac OS X bootable USB using the DMG file of the operating system with the steps below.

Create Mac OS X bootable USB installation media

Before you can use TransMac, you first need to partition your USB flash drive with a GPT partition, as a normal MBR partition may not work. To do this, you’ll need to use the Diskpart command-line utility on Windows 10.

Sierra

Setting up GPT partition

Use these steps to set up a USB drive with a GPT partition:

  1. Open Start on Windows 10.

  2. Search for Command Prompt, right-click the top result and select the Run as Administrator option.

  3. Type the following command to open Diskpart and press Enter:

  4. Type the following command to determine the USB flash drive and press Enter:

  5. Type the following command to select the storage and press Enter:

    Quick tip: The select disk 1 command as an example, but you have to replace 1 with the number of the flash drive you want to use.
  6. Type the following commands to delete everything from the USB thumb drive and press Enter:

  7. Type the following command to convert the drive into a GPT partition and press Enter:

  8. Type the following command to select the new partition and press Enter:

After you complete the steps, the USB flash drive from MBR to GPT format, you can use the steps below to create a bootable USB installation media to install Mac OS X.

Create USB install media

Usb Mac Os X Bootable

Use these steps to create a bootable media to install Mac OS X:

  1. Download and install a copy of TransMac.

    Quick note: TransMac is a paid software, but it has a 15-day trial solution, that give us more than enough time to move the DMG files to the USB drive from Windows. (If you want to support the developer, you can purchase the full version.)
  2. Insert the USB drive that you’ll use to fix your installation of OS X. (Remember that all the data in the USB will be erased. Make sure you take off any important documents.)

  3. Right-click the TransMac software icon and Run as administrator. (You’ll be prompted to Enter Key or Run, because we’ll be using it once, click the Run option.)

  4. On the left pane, you’ll see all the Windows PC drives listed, right-click the USB drive that you’re intending to use to reinstall Apple’s OS X and select the Restore with Disk Image option.

  5. In the warning dialog box, click the Yes button.

  6. Use the Restore Disk Image to Drive dialog box to browse for the DMG file with the installation files for Mac OS X Yosemite in this case, and click the OK button to create a bootable USB of the operating system.

    Now, you’ll have to wait a long time. No kidding. It could take one or two hours to complete the process depending on your computer and other variables.

Mac Os High Sierra Download Bootable Usb Windows

Once your bootable USB installation media is ready, remove it and insert it into your Mac, power it on, holding down the Option key, and select the USB you just created to reinstall Mac OS X.

If you’re having issues trying to create a bootable media, you can get a USB flash drive that comes with Mac OSX ready to install.