Create Install Media El Capitan

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Creating a bootable macOS USB installer

Open your Applications folder. Right click on your Install OS X El Capitan.app file, choose Show Package Contents and expand the folders for Contents, Resources and see if the createinstallmedia file is in Resources. Nov 18, 2016 4:20 AM. The El Capitan installer is downloaded to the /Applications folder, with the file name 'Install OS X El Capitan.' If you've installed El Capitan and want to create a bootable installer, re-download the installer from Apple.

  • First, plug in an 8GB (or bigger) USB drive, and use Disk Utility to erase it
  • If you use the default settings, you should wind up with a blank drive at /Volumes/Untitled.
  • Just click on the setup file and with some click, the installation will finish. After that, Launch TransMac when TransMac is launched you will see the list of Flash drives or local disk. Then Right-click on that flash you want to create bootable USB for Mac OS El Capitan then select Restore with Disk Image. Restore with the Disk image.
  • .media, HD floppies, dmg, dmg part, sparse bundle. Now it is the time to create a bootable USB installer using TransMac, To install Mac OS El Capitan on.

With that volume in place, and with the macOS installer sitting in /Applications/Install macOS [VERSION].app,run the following command in your terminal to create a bootable install media (for Sierra):

You should see output like the following—it might take a while to finish.

Create Install Media El Capitan

To boot from the installer, reboot your Mac and hold down the alt/option key, and it will let youchoose to boot from the USB disk.

Enjoy!

If you’re getting an error like this saying 'This copy of the Install OS X El Capitan application can't be verified. It may have been corrupted or tampered with during downloading.', then it means that the system time on your laptop is too far in the future for the certificates contained in your installer image (they expire a certain time after you originally download the installer). To proceed, do the following:

  1. Open up a terminal window, using the Utilities > Terminal menu option.
  2. As outlined in this Stack Overflow answer use the date command to set the date back to a time closer to when you would have downloaded the installer (i.e. Jan 1st, 2016 worked for me with El Capitan). E.g. date 0101090016
  3. Go back and attempt to reinstall OS X again, and it should work.

With a bootable Ubuntu USB stick, you can:

  • Install or upgrade Ubuntu, even on a Mac
  • Test out the Ubuntu desktop experience without touching your PC configuration
  • Boot into Ubuntu on a borrowed machine or from an internet cafe
  • Use tools installed by default on the USB stick to repair or fix a broken configuration

Creating a bootable USB stick is very simple, especially if you’re going to use the USB stick with a generic Windows or Linux PC. We’re going to cover the process in the next few steps.

Apple hardware considerations

Create Install Media El Capitan Download

Create Install Media El Capitan

Create Install Media El Capitan Installer

There are a few additional considerations when booting the USB stick on Apple hardware. This is because Apple’s ‘Startup Manager’, summoned by holding the Option/alt (⌥) key when booting, won’t detect the USB stick without a specific partition table and layout. We’ll cover this in a later step.