There are various ways to boot macOS. Aside from using the built-in Startup Manager, you can also boot into Verbose, Safe, and Target Disk modes. In addition to this, macOS users also have an option of picking a disk to boot the operating system from. But let’s delve into something more specific. You’re about to find out how to boot your Mac up directly from external storage, specifically flash storage or a USB-based flash drive. Learn how to create bootable flash drive for Windows 10.

Why You Need to Boot from External Drive?

There are many occasions you may have trouble with your Mac.

Create bootable USB drives the easy way Rufus is a utility that helps format and create bootable USB flash drives, such as USB keys/pendrives, memory sticks, etc. It can be especially useful for cases where: you need to create USB installation media from bootable ISOs (Windows, Linux, UEFI, etc.).

1. Mar 12, 2020  How to create a bootable installer for macOS Download macOS. Installers for each of these macOS versions download directly to your Applications folder as an app. Use the 'createinstallmedia' command in Terminal. Connect the USB flash drive or other volume that you're using for the.
2. Mar 24, 2020  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.

• Corrupted system files and Mac crashes unexpectedly.
• Mac runs very slow with sufficient storage.
• You have deleted some system files wrongly.
• You couldn’t login to your Mac.
• Troubleshooting purposes.

Let’s begin with the obvious question here; what are the basic requirements for creating bootable USB for Mac?

How to Create Bootable USB Drive for Mac?

1. USB drive with sufficient storage space.
2. Access to a working and supported Mac.
3. Format USB to Apple supported file system.
4. Get installer file for macOS.
5. Create bootable USB.
6. Booting Mac from Startup Manager.

If you are not able to login to your Mac, you need to use Time Machine backup disk. Otherwise you should have another Mac for creating a bootable USB.

1. USB Drive

The macOS installer file is large with approximate size of 6 to 10GB depending upon the version. Also the process needs to sufficient storage space on your USB. So ensure to have at least 32GB or greater storage space on your USB drive.

Remember to copy and backup the USB since you need to delete the entire content for creating the bootable drive.

2. An Intel Based Mac

Apple transitioned to an Intel processors in 2005. In other words, if your Mac is not older than 2005, you should be fine.

3. Format USB Flash Drive to Apple File System

First, plug in your USB drive. Press “Command +Spacebar” to access Spotlight, then type “Disk Utility”. You can view the current file system of the USB drive. In our example, we have FAT32 file system which is compatible on Windows. You need to erase and format the USB to be compatible with your Mac.

Click on the “Erase” button on “Disk Utility” and choose the format as either APFS or Mac OS Extended. In most cases, your Mac will show the supported format by default and you don’t need to change it. On older Mac, you will see an additional scheme option, choose “GUID Partition Map”. Click on “Erase” button to continue further.

Disk Utility will delete all content on the USB and format it in the selected APFS or Mac OS Extended format.

4. MacOS Installer File

In order to create a bootable USB drive for Mac, you need download Mac OS installer. Open App Store on your Mac and search for the latest macOS version. Remember, App Store will only have the latest version which is macOS Mojave at this point when we write this article. Search for “macOS mojave” and click on the “Get” button.

This will start downloading the installer file to your “Applications” folder.

5. Creating USB Installer

After downloading, the installer will automatically ask you to install macOS Mojave. Simply quit the installer without starting the installation.

• At this point, ensure you have inserted the formatted USB drive, let’s say the name of the USB volume is “Boot Disk”.
• Also make sure the downloaded macOS installer file is in “Applications” folder.
• Press “Command + Spacebar” and search for “terminal” to open Terminal app.
• Copy and paste the below command in Terminal and hit enter.

• You need to enter admin password to proceed further.
• Terminal will ask you to confirm erasing the volume, press Y and hit enter to confirm.

Ready to start.

To continue we need to erase the volume at /Volumes/Boot Disk.

If you wish to continue type (Y) then press return:

• Now the erase disk process will start to copy the installer file on the USB drive. After successful completion of the process, name of the USB drive will be changed similar to the installer file name like “Install macOS Mojave”.

Create Bootable Usb On Mac

Note that Apple discourages booting with an earlier macOS version than the version your device is shipped with.

6. Boot Mac from USB

Follow the below process to boot your Mac from bootable USB:

• Insert the bootable USB installer drive and go to “Apple Menu > Restart”.
• When your Mac restarts, press and hold the Option key till “Startup Manager” opens.
• The Startup Manager scans and lists the drives that are connected and bootable.
• Note that the Startup Manager will only list volumes that include bootable volumes. If you only see “Macintosh HD” like below then the USB drive is not connected to your Mac or not created properly with the installer file.

• Select your Wi-Fi network name from the “Choose Network…” dropdown and enter the password to connect to internet. Remember, you need to have an internet connection for installing from USB as the installer needs to get updates for your Mac from Apple’s server.
• Double click on your USB that contains the macOS installer or highlight it and press the return key.
• You will see macOS Recovery app and choose “Install macOS” option from Utilities.
• It may take long time depending upon your Mac to start booting with macOS Mojave.

Wrapping Up

Software To Create Macos Bootable Usb

As simple as the process seems, it tells you a lot about your system. For example, if a USB flash drive that contains a bootable copy of macOS doesn’t show up on the Startup manager, you may need to repair the disk permission. Also, remember to format the USB drive with a APFS or Mac OS Extended format.

That said, now you know how to boot up another version of or a copy of macOS and troubleshoot possible issues with your device.

How can I make a bootable Windows installation USB on Mac OS X? After upgrading to macOS Mojave, you may find that Boot Camp Assistant is no longer supported and thus creating a bootable USB turns out to be a little bit challenging. In this tutorial we’ll show you how to create Windows 10 bootable USB from ISO on Mac, by using the Terminal or third-party software like UNetbottin.

Method 1: Create Windows 10 Bootable USB on Mac Using UNetbottin

UNetbootin is a free, open source utility that allows you to create bootable USB drives on Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X. If you’ve downloaded Windows 10 ISO image, here is how you can create a bootable Windows installer USB on Mac using UNetbootin.

1. Plug a USB drive into your Mac and open Disk Utility. Select your USB drive from the left panel and click on Info button. Note down the device name since we will need that later.
2. Next, download and launch the UNetbottin utility. Select the “Diskimage” radio button, click “…” to select a bootable ISO image.
3. After locating your Windows 10 ISO file, click on Open.
4. Choose Type as USB Drive and select the device name of your USB drive (you probably would’ve noted it down earlier, so refer to that). Click OK to start installing to the USB drive.
5. This process takes several minutes or longer, depending on the size of your selected ISO image.

Method 2: Create Windows 10 Bootable USB on Mac Using Terminal

Of course, if you prefer not to use third-party software, you can still use the excellent Terminal app, which is a little bit more involved, but no additional software needs to be installed. Follow these steps:

Make Bootable Usb Mac Software

1. After connecting a USB drive to your Mac, open a Terminal window and type diskutil list to display all the disks attached to your machine. You have to figure out the disk identifier of the USB drive you need to format. In my example, my USB drive is mounted as “disk2” and it’s about 32GB.
2. Next, run the following command to format your USB drive and name it “WIN10“, where # is a placeholder for the disk identifier of your USB drive.
   diskutil eraseDisk MS-DOS 'WIN10' GPT disk#
3. Now, mount your Windows 10 ISO image with the command below, assuming it’s saved the Downloads folder. In my case, it is mounted as a volume named “ESD-ISO“.
   hdiutil mount ~/Downloads/your_windows_10_image.iso
4. Finally, run the following command to copy all the files from the mounted ISO to your USB drive.
   cp -rp /Volumes/ESD-ISO/* /Volumes/WIN10/

   This command will take a while, and once it finishes, you can disconnect the mounted ISO with this command:
   hdiutil unmount /Volumes/ESD-ISO

5. Now you should be able to boot from the USB to install Windows 10 on your Mac or Windows machine.

Conclusion

These should be the easiest ways to create a Windows 10 bootable USB from ISO on Mac, without using Boot Camp Assistant. No matter which method you prefer, be sure that you backup any important data on your USB drive, as the procedure of creating bootable USB will delete everything on it.

Create Bootable Usb Mac Software Windows 7

Create Bootable Usb Mac Software 2017