create bootable mac os x external hard drive

If you simply want a bootable thumb drive, just install OSX onto that volume - turning off all the extras you may not need. It also avoids the need of downloading commercial software from the internet. It's not that hard to make a bootable image and far more secure to DIY. You can’t set this to be the default boot with System Integrity Protection but for this use, bless should still work.

(Note - the manual page for bless may be moved, but the command still works on Mojave to bless an alternate boot. before restoring an IMG to the USB drive.Ģ) bless the USB drive by selecting it in Startup Disk or using the command line. Watch for restore errors - you may need the Disk Utility menu command Images -> Scan images for restore. I usually first create a IMG of the DVD, but it should work in one shot.

(Migration Assistant, Disk Utility, Network Utility, Terminal (that auto mounts your internal drive as needed), Firmware Utility and Password Reset Utility.ġ) Use Disk Utility backup/restore to image whatever Snow Leopard DVD you prefer onto a HFS+ formatted GUID USB drive. Really - try the above if you can, but as an alternative, here is a simple recipe for making a USB version of the OS X installer + associated tools. With OS X El Capitan, Yosemite, or Mavericks, you can use a USB flash drive or other removable media as a startup disk from which to install OS X.

- Create a bootable installer for OS X.If Apple's supported method of using the createinstallmedia tool doesn't work, you can try other options below:

Create bootable mac os x external hard drive