Mac Os X Usb Flash Drive

  

  1. Sep 06, 2019  Use a Mac OS X installation Disc. If you’re unable to use Internet Recovery Mode or create a bootable USB installer, you can still use a Mac OS X installation disc. These discs are available for OS X Snow Leopard, OS X Lion, and OS X Mountain Lion. If your Mac is from 2012 or earlier, there was an installation disc in the original box.
  2. Note that this article covers versions of Mac OS X Prior to Lion (Mac OS X 10.7). We also have instructions for creating a Lion-installer drive. Step 1: Disk Utility.
  3. Dec 17, 2018  Mac OS Extended (Journaled) This format is considered as default file system format of the Mac OS X drives. It also supports OS X Lion, like Versions. This format will allow you to use your flash drive on Mac without any limitations. With Mac OS Extended (Journaled) format, you can setup OS X startup drive.
Mac Os X Usb Flash Drive

Jun 09, 2020  But I use old Mac's, and its an inconvenience to have to erase one of my other USB sticks as I dont have a collection of them around. I managed to get this apple USB stick brand new sealed off ebay a few days ago for just £6, some other seller is selling a brand new OS X Lion installer USB. When OS X shipped on a DVD a good number of years ago, you always had the convenience of a bootable installer—an OS X installer that could be used to boot your Mac if its own drive was having. Sep 14, 2015  Bootable optical media (CD or DVD) on Macs equipped with Apple’s Super Drive or a USB thumb drive formatted with a GUID partition type and containing an OS X installer or a usable operating system. Apple advises against booting from external storage containing a version of Mac OS X earlier than the one your Mac shipped with. Sep 23, 2019  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.

These advanced steps are primarily for system administrators and others who are familiar with the command line. You don't need a bootable installer to upgrade macOS or reinstall macOS, but it can be useful when you want to install on multiple computers without downloading the installer each time.

Download macOS

Find the appropriate download link in the upgrade instructions for each macOS version:

macOS Catalina, macOS Mojave, ormacOS High Sierra
Installers for each of these macOS versions download directly to your Applications folder as an app named Install macOS Catalina, Install macOS Mojave, or Install macOS High Sierra. If the installer opens after downloading, quit it without continuing installation. Important: To get the correct installer, download from a Mac that is using macOS Sierra 10.12.5 or later, or El Capitan 10.11.6. Enterprise administrators, please download from Apple, not a locally hosted software-update server.

OS X El Capitan
El Capitan downloads as a disk image. On a Mac that is compatible with El Capitan, open the disk image and run the installer within, named InstallMacOSX.pkg. It installs an app named Install OS X El Capitan into your Applications folder. You will create the bootable installer from this app, not from the disk image or .pkg installer.

Use the 'createinstallmedia' command in Terminal

  1. Connect the USB flash drive or other volume that you're using for the bootable installer. Make sure that it has at least 12GB of available storage and is formatted as Mac OS Extended.
  2. Open Terminal, which is in the Utilities folder of your Applications folder.
  3. Type or paste one of the following commands in Terminal. These assume that the installer is still in your Applications folder, and MyVolume is the name of the USB flash drive or other volume you're using. If it has a different name, replace MyVolume in these commands with the name of your volume.
    Catalina:*
    Mojave:*

    High Sierra:*
    El Capitan:
  4. Press Return after typing the command.
  5. When prompted, type your administrator password and press Return again. Terminal doesn't show any characters as you type your password.
  6. When prompted, type Y to confirm that you want to erase the volume, then press Return. Terminal shows the progress as the bootable installer is created.
  7. When Terminal says that it's done, the volume will have the same name as the installer you downloaded, such as Install macOS Catalina. You can now quit Terminal and eject the volume.

Mac Os X El Capitan 10.11 - Usb Flash Drive Installer

* If your Mac is using macOS Sierra or earlier, include the --applicationpath argument, similar to the way this argument is used in the command for El Capitan.

Use the bootable installer

After creating the bootable installer, follow these steps to use it:

  1. Plug the bootable installer into a compatible Mac.
  2. Use Startup Manager or Startup Disk preferences to select the bootable installer as the startup disk, then start up from it. Your Mac will start up to macOS Recovery.
    Learn about selecting a startup disk, including what to do if your Mac doesn't start up from it.
  3. Choose your language, if prompted.
  4. A bootable installer doesn't download macOS from the Internet, but it does require the Internet to get information specific to your Mac model, such as firmware updates. If you need to connect to a Wi-Fi network, use the Wi-Fi menu in the menu bar.
  5. Select Install macOS (or Install OS X) from the Utilities window, then click Continue and follow the onscreen instructions.

Learn more

For more information about the createinstallmedia command and the arguments that you can use with it, make sure that the macOS installer is in your Applications folder, then enter this path in Terminal:

Catalina:

Mojave:

High Sierra:

El Capitan:

This simple guide will teach you How to Format a Flash Drive on Mac. Not only this, we will help you pick the best file system for your usb flash drive that you are planning to use on a Mac.

Majority of 49.4% of desktop and laptop computer users in the world use Windows operating system. In contrast, only 27.4% of users use MacOS, obviously for their apple computer. That’s the reason why most of the flash drives in the market are available in Fat32 or NTFS formats which are the most preferred format for windows. Although the first one, Fat32 is completely compatible with both MacOS as well as Windows, it has some limitations. Fat32 can store files only up to 4 GB of size. The latter one, NTFS is mostly used on the Windows operating system and not an optimal option for MacOS. Extra work is needed to use NTFS on MacOS. If you want to use your flash drive solely for MacOS, it is highly recommended to format your flash drive.

Here, pop-ups the question: How to format a flash drive on a mac?

Contents

  • 1 Before you format a flash drive
    • 1.1 Check flash Drive’s File System
  • 2 How to format a flash drive on Mac?

Before you format a flash drive

MacOS supports HFS plus file system. HFS stands for Hierarchical File System.

Apple introduced this file system in 1985 to replace the existing Macintosh File System or MFS. HFS filesystem is modified into HFS plus (Modernly called as MacOS Extended). Before you format a flash drive it is suggested to know what file system your flash drive is in.

Check flash Drive’s File System

Mac Os X Usb Flash Drive Tool

You don’t need to do anything special to know your flash drive’s file system. There are 2 ways you can do this.

Method 1: Using Finder

Plug in your flash drive. Now open the Finder and look for your USB device. Then right-click on the drive’s name. Select “Get Info” from the list of options opened.

A new window will open. Just to the right of “Format” is your drive’s file system.

Method 2: Using Disk utility app

Open the Disk Utility app from the utility folder available in the application. Your drive will be on the left column of the window. Click on the partition. Here you can check the current format of your flash drive.

If your flash drive’s file system is MS-DOS or ExFAT you can use it as it is without further formatting. But if it is NTFS, format your flash drive to make it completely compatible with MacOS.

How to format a flash drive on Mac?

Disk Utility application in MacOS is the best option to format a flash drive on MacOS. You can launch this app in two ways.

Boot Usb Mac Os X

Step 1: Press Space while holding your command button. A search box will open. Type Disk Utility in the search box and press enter. Alternatively, Open the Finder window and select applications on the left sidebar. Navigate to Utilities and then Disk Utilities.

Mac Os On Usb

Step 2: Search for your flash drive on the sidebar of the Disk Utility app and select it by clicking on its name.

Step 3: Now Click the “Erase” button which is located just below the title bar of the window which says “Disk Utility”. This will erase your whole drive and make it a single partition.

Here you can change the name of your USB drive if you wish. This name will be visible on other devices as well if you plug your flash drive into them. Just below the Name section, you can see a section called “Format”.

You will need to choose a format option to change your flash drive’s file system. But which format to choose is the big question now! No need to worry. Read the description of each format given below and choose the format of your choice.

Types of filesystems

Mac OS Extended (Journaled)

This format is considered as default file system format of the Mac OS X drives. It also supports OS X Lion, like Versions. This format will allow you to use your flash drive on Mac without any limitations.

Mac Os X Usb Flash Drive Download

With Mac OS Extended (Journaled) format, you can setup OS X startup drive. Make sure you have right files and know how to do it. If you have any issues with a built-in drive you can boot from the external disk. This file system format is highly recommended for MacOS. But you cannot write this flash drive from windows PC once you have formatted it as Mac OS Extended (Journaled). You can read files though.

OS X Extended (Case-sensitive, Journaled)

Go for this type of filesystem if you really need it for some reason. For OS X Extended (Case-sensitive, Journaled), the word “File” is different than “file”. It means it’s case sensitive as the name suggests.

OS X Extended (Case-sensitive, Journaled, Encrypted)
Mac Os X Usb Flash Drive

Same as filesystem just mentioned above but of course with encryption.

OS X Extended (Journaled, Encrypted)

To use a flash drive with this filesystem you will have to set up a password & enter it whenever you plug in your drive into any device.

MS-DOS (FAT)

This is just a name for the FAT32 filesystem in Disk Utility application. FAT32 supports to almost all of the operating systems in the world. This allows you to transfer files from one operating system to other. The best thing about this filesystem is its support to video game systems which include Xbox 360 and PlayStation. This filesystem can be called a universal system. The limitation about FAT32 filesystem is it doesn’t allow files which are bigger than 4 GB in size and also you cannot create a startup drive unlike Mac OS Extended (Journaled).

ExFAT

This is a new type of filesystem and it supports MacOS X 10.6.5 and later. It is same as FAT32 but it supports files larger than 4 GB. As this filesystem is relatively new, it does not on relatively older versions of Mac OS X. If you don’t use any older version of the operating system, you can use this type of filesystem.

Use ExFAT for this tutorial if you wish to use your flash drive on windows as well on MacOS.

Step 4: For this tutorial, you can ignore the Scheme option which we use if you wish to boot from your flash drive. Click on erase button to format your flash drive.

Voila! You have formatted your flash drive now. You can eject drive by right-clicking on its name in the left sidebar and click on “Eject”.

Suggested article: How to Reset SMC on Mac?

I hope this article has helped. If you are still facing problems or have doubts on how to format USB drive on Mac, then simply comment below.

Mac Os X Usb Flash Drive Windows 10

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