Creating a bootable USB drive of OS X Yosemite 10.10 if you want to save it on a external drive for future usage or just want to install it on multiple Mac computers. To make OS X Yosemite bootable USB installer drive, there are few requirements. Lets see what are those.
Note: This guide to make installer USB drive is for OS X Yosemite Developer Preview
DMG file is a compressed file format being used widely on Mac computer. Windows OS doesn't natively support DMG disk image files, so if you need to create a bootable USB drive from a DMG file, mostly for bootable Mac OS X or macOS installation USB, you need a special utility to help you complete the task. 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. Create an El Capitan Installer ISO with VirtualBox from the Recovery image; Create other Installer USBs from El Capitan in VirtualBox; Create the Recovery ISO. The Apple download contains a recovery image called BaseSystem.dmg which needs to be copied to a correctly partitions and formatted recovery USB or ISO. Download the OS X El Capitan.
See also: Dual Boot OS X Yosemite and Mavericks
Make OS X Yosemite Bootable USB
Requirements
- You must have an external USB drive or storage media with capacity of at-least 8GB (Save data from it because we are going to format it).
- OS X Yosemite installer downloaded (You can join OS X Beta program)
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.
Select the drive and then do the following steps to create a single partition that is required to make USB installer drive for OS X Yosemite 10.10.
Click on “Partition Layout” drop-down menu and select “1 Partition” option from it.
Then enter the Partition information Name: ”osxyosemite”, Format: “Mac OS Extended (Journaled)”.
Click the “Options” button to select the partition scheme, so select “GUID Partition Table” option and click OK button.
To complete the creating partition process hit the “Apply” button and then “Partition” button. This will take some time to format and making USB drive as a 1 partition. Once done, you will notice a new drive name will be displayed on the left side, the name that you given in the partition information. Now close the Disk Utility tool.
Show hidden files
Showing hidden files is required, because there are few hidden files in the OS X Yosemite installer package that you need to unhide first to write them on bootable USB drive.
Open Mac “Terminal” command line: press cmd+space keys and type Terminal in the spotlight, click the Terminal from search results or just open the Terminal from Applications > Utilities > Terminal.
Type the following two commands one by one:
defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles YES
Killall Finder
First command is going to show hidden files and the second one is to restart the Finder so we can see the instant effect of first command. Close the Terminal.
Open Applications, here you will see your downloaded OS X Yosemite file “Install OS X 10.10”. Cmd+click on it to view the menu, select “Show Package Contents”.
Open “Contents” > “SharedSupport” folder and here you will see “InstallESD.dmg” file, double click to open the file and OS X may starts verifying this file so let the verification process finished.
After that you will see a folder with the following content in it, “BaseSystem.dmg” is the file that we need and it was hidden, so now you know that why we show the hidden files in above steps.
Open the Disk Utility again from “Applications” > “Utilities” > “Disk Utility” or by using Spotlight search.
Load the “BaseSystem.dmg” file into the Disk Utility, right-click on the file and choose “Open With” > “Disk Utility” option. After doing that open the Disk Utility and you will see the file “BaseSystem.dmg” is loaded in the Disk Utility on the left side.
Restore Disk Image
Now we are going to restore “BaseSystem.dmg” disk image on the USB drive.
Select your USB partition that we created in previous first steps, then click the Restore tab.
Under Restore tab there are two fields, Source and Destination.
Click and drag the “BaseSystem.dmg” to Source field and “osxyosemite” usb drive to Destination filed, see screenshot below to get more idea. When done hit the Restore button and you need to confirm “Are you sure you want to replace the content on USB drive with the content of disk image” so click the Erase button to confirm, after that you may need to enter the administrator password. Restoring disk image is time taking process so be patient.
Once the restoring disk image process is finished you will see a folder like this. Here, open the “System” > “Installation” folders and move the Packages file to trash.
Copy the “Packages” folder from the folder where the “BaseSystem.dmg” exist. and paste it into the Installation folder that you just opened in previous step.
Hide the system files again using this commanddefaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles NO
How to Boot from USB Drive
You must know the system requirements of OS X Yosemite before installing it, If your system to capable to run this OS X version 10.10 then Shutdown your Mac, plug the OS X Yosemite Bootable USB into Mac. Press the power button again to turn it On and then hold the Alt or Option key from keyboard, when you see this screen release the button. Double click on the USB drive to boot from it.
Congratulations! you successfully perform all steps to make bootable USB drive to install OS X Yosemite on more that one Mac computers without worried of downloading it on each computer separately, you will saved lot of bandwidth and time as well. Thanks for reading if you have any problem we are here to help you just write your problem below in comments box.
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DMG file is a compressed file format being used widely on Mac computer. Windows OS doesn't natively support DMG disk image files, so if you need to create a bootable USB drive from a DMG file, mostly for bootable Mac OS X or macOS installation USB, you need a special utility to help you complete the task.
There is also the possibility of converting the file into a format more suitable for Windows, which is the ISO file format for disk images. Considering the above, let's look at different ways to create a bootable drive from a DMG file on a Windows computer.
Part 1: Convert DMG to ISO and Make Bootable USB from ISO
Since Windows doesn't offer native support for DMG files, you can first convert the file to ISO. Why? A lot of easier to find an app for making a bootable USB from ISO file. The easy way to do this is to use Command Prompt. Don't be intimidated by the non-GUI environment even if you don't have any experience. If you follow the steps below, you can convert any DMG file to ISO and then create a bootable USB using the converted file.
Step 1: Open Command Prompt by typing cmd in the Run windows and hitting Enter.
Step 2: In the command interface, go to the directory in which the DMG file is saved. You can do this by using the 'cd' command followed by the file path, then pressing Enter. For example, if your disk image is in D: and Command Prompt is currently in 'C:', then type 'd:' (no quotes) and press Enter. If it is in a subfolder, type 'cd subfolder', and so on.
Step 3: Use the following command to convert the DMG file to ISO:
hdiutil convert /path/sourceimagefile.dmg -format UDTO -o /path/targetmage.iso
Step 4: Once the ISO file has been created, you can use a burning tool to create the bootable USB drive. To do that, continue with this guide.
Cons:
- File damged or broken after conversion.
- Failed booting from burned USB disk.
- May not work with the latest DMG file.
- Complex and take more time.
Part 2: Create Mac OS X Bootable USB Installer from DMG
Androidphonesoft DMG Editor is a powerful software application for Windows that will allow you to manage the non-native DMG format even if you have no experience. The interface is uncluttered, and you can even use the tool to view files, extract them, edit the DMG and even copy it to a disk. The burn function has one of the highest success rates in the industry, which makes this an ideal utility for our purpose.
Created by the talented team of developers at Androidphonesoft, DMG Editor is currently the most intuitive Windows app for handling Apple's disk image format. Each of its functions have been tested on various Windows versions, with different types of DMG files and on different PC brands. This thorough testing means no wasted DVDs or corrupted files. As long as your DMG file is in good shape, you can directly create a bootable disk.
Step 1 Install DMG Editor
Download and install DMG Editor on your Windows PC.
Step 2 Plug in USB Drive
Launch the application and click on the 'Burn' section. You will also see other modules such as Edit, Extract.
Step 3 Load DMG File
Now import the DMG file by clicking the 'Browse' button and choose the USB drive name.
Step 4 Start Burning DMG to USB Drive
Click 'Burn' button at the bottom of window to start burning DMG file to USB drive. Once it get started, it displays a progress bar and you have to wait for the task to be finished. Usually, it takes 20 minutes depending on how large the file is.
In a few moments, your bootable USB flash drive will be ready for use. Since you haven't done any conversion, you can use this directly on a Mac for program installation, which you cannot do with the first method.
Part 3: Create Bootable USB from DMG in Windows Via PowerISO
Another well-known disk image utility is PowerISO. Apart from being ideal for burning ISO files, it can also burn a DMG file to USB to create a bootable drive. There are some settings that you have to keep in mind when burning with this software, but it's easy to get the hang of it once you do it a couple of times.
Step 1: Download PowerISO and install it in your Windows PC. Launch the app and insert a USB drive into a free USB slot in your computer.
Create Yosemite Usb From Dmg Usb
Step 2: You can import the DMG file directly by clicking on ‘Burn' in the toolbar or going to Tools >Burn. In the Burn window, select the DMG file from the Source File section.
Step 3:Now review the settings to select the burn speed. The default will be the maximum your hardware can handle, so you can reduce that. You can also choose to finalize the disk and verify it. Finalizing means you can't save any more files on the drive, but it primarily applies to DVDs and CDs. Choosing ‘Verify' will prompt the software to execute an additional process after the burning is done. Any errors in the bootable USB will show up at that point.
Step 4: Now click on 'Burn' and wait for the progress bar to reach 100%. Your bootable USB is now ready.
Cons:
Bootable Yosemite Usb From Dmg
- Expensive for a single license.
- Higher failure rate for bootable device.
- Ugly user interface.
Create Yosemite Usb From Dmg Converter
The Bottom Line:
The second two methods are recommended if you don't have much experience working with DMG files, but DMG Editor will appeal to novices and experts alike. The clean interface and minimal user input means a lower chance of errors while creating the bootable media.
Create Yosemite Usb From Dmg Mac
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