If you’ve never used Terminal before, don’t worry. Now you’re going to use Terminal to create a boot drive. So you have your external drive, and the Sierra beta installer is in place. Also works with older versions of OS X.ĭiskmaker X is a popular app. I was able to make a macOS Sierra external USB boot disk in a few minutes, and the installation worked without a hitch. Install Disk Creator is a straightforward way to create a boot disk. If your really don’t want to use Terminal, there are a couple of free apps you can use.

The process detailed below involves the Terminal. Change the name of your drive to Untitled you need to do this for the steps below. The drive will be reformatted automatically as part of the process. I’ve used different drives with success, including a VisionTek 120GB USB 3.0 Pocket Solid State Drive ($83 on Amazon) and an old 8GB Iomega Micro Mini Hard Drive.ĭon’t worry if the drive isn’t formatted for the Mac. You can use a USB flash drive or a hard drive with room for the installer software. If it automatically launches after download, quit the installer. Look for macOS Sierra in the list of apps that you’ve bought, and click on the Download button. You can download it again if you go to Purchased in the App Store. If you’ve already upgraded your Mac to Sierra, the installer is removed from the Applications folder. Keep the installer in the Applications folder. ( Here’s a link.) Click on the Download button, and your Mac will download the installer to your Applications folder. Launch the App Store app, then look for macOS Sierra in the store. Macworld also has bootable-install-drive instructions for:

Here’s how to create a bootable macOS Sierra installer drive. The installer software will take up nearly 5GB of storage space. You can create a bootable USB flash drive with the macOS Sierra installer that’s now available. When I need to tend to a bunch of Macs, it’s much faster to use a bootable drive instead of going to each Mac, launching the App Store, searching for the operating system, downloading it (after entering my Apple ID), and then running the installer. That’s why I like to make a bootable external drive for the sole purpose of installing the Mac operating system. And if you have multiple Macs, it’s inefficient to download the new OS to each and every Mac. It’s convenient, but sometimes it can take a while for a download to finish. How to create a bootable macOS Sierra installer driveīy Roman Loyola at Senior Editor, Macworld | 1:32 PM PDTĪpple uses its App Store to distribute its software, like new Mac operating systems.

*Quick note from Save Apple Dollars - Older OS X Images can now be downloaded directly from Apple at please right click on the image link and select “save as”.

Bootable flash drive for mac