It was 2009 when Apple last released a new operating system on physical media. Things have proceeded remarkably smoothly since version 10.7 switched to download-only installers, but there are still good reasons to want an old, reliable USB stick. For instance, if you find yourself doing multiple installs, a USB drive may be faster than multiple downloads (especially if you use a USB 3.0 drive). Or maybe you need a recovery disk for older Macs that don't support the Internet Recovery feature. Whatever the reason, you're in luck, because it's not hard to make one.
- DVD DL, Mac OS X 10.11 El Capitan Full OS Install Reinstall Recovery Upgrade. Latest certificate (expires ). Please CHECK twice if your Mac model is compatible with this macOS!! If you are not 100% sure please check the pics or message me your mac model and year and I.
- Download El Capitan from the Mac App Store. Head over to your existing OS X environment running 10.9 or later and open the Mac App Store. Search for 'El Capitan' and click Download. The download is completely free if you're running OS X 10.9+. Wait for the download to finish (this could take some time). Format the USB Drive.
El Capitan Boot Dvd
As with last year, there are two ways to get it done. There's the super easy way with the graphical user interface and the only slightly less easy way that requires some light Terminal use. Here's what you need to get started.
- A Mac that you have administrator access to, duh. We've created El Capitan USB stick from both Yosemite and El Capitan, but your experience with other versions may vary.
- An 8GB or larger USB flash drive or an 8GB or larger partition on some other kind of external drive. For newer Macs, use a USB 3.0 drive—it makes things significantly faster.
- The OS X 10.11 El Capitan installer from the Mac App Store in your Applications folder. The installer will delete itself when you install the operating system, but it can be re-downloaded if necessary.
- If you want a GUI, you need the latest version of Diskmaker X app. Version 5 is the one with official El Capitan support.
- Diskmaker X is free to download, but the creator accepts donations if you want to support his efforts.
I was facing a stalled boot (stuck at end of apple bar) on MBP 13 and 15 running El Capitan but also Yosemite. I tried all the classical SMC, PR NVRAM, single, re-install, with absolute no success So I ended up re-installing clean, migrating and it worked but only for a while 🙁 Your solution fixed it for good on Yosemite and El Capitan.
The easy way
Once you've obtained all of the necessary materials, connect the USB drive to your Mac and run the Diskmaker X app. The app will offer to make installers for OS X 10.9, 10.10, and 10.11, and it should run on OS X versions all the way back to 10.7—support for 10.6 was dropped in the most recent release.
AdvertisementDiskmaker X has actually been around since the days of OS X 10.7 (it was previously known as Lion Diskmaker), and it's still the easiest GUI-based way to go without intimidating newbies. If you're comfortable with the command line, it's still possible to create a disk manually using a Terminal command, which we'll cover momentarily.
Select OS X 10.11 in Diskmaker X, and the app should automatically find the copy you've downloaded to your Applications folder. It will then ask you where you want to copy the files—click 'An 8GB USB thumb drive' if you have a single drive to use or 'Another kind of disk' to use a partition on a larger drive or some other kind of external drive. Choose your disk (or partition) from the list that appears, verify that you'd like to have the disk (or partition) erased, and then wait for the files to copy over. The process is outlined in screenshots above.
The only slightly less-easy way
If you don't want to use Diskmaker X, Apple has actually included a terminal command that can create an install disk for you. Assuming that you have the OS X El Capitan installer in your Applications folder and you have a Mac OS X Extended (Journaled)-formatted USB drive named 'Untitled' mounted on the system, you can create an El Capitan install drive by typing the following command into the Terminal.
sudo /Applications/Install OS X El Capitan.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/Untitled --applicationpath /Applications/Install OS X El Capitan.app --nointeraction
The command will erase the disk and copy the install files over. Give it some time, and your volume will soon be loaded up with not just the OS X installer but also an external recovery partition that may come in handy if your hard drive dies and you're away from an Internet connection.
Whichever method you use, you should be able to boot from your new USB drive either by changing the default Startup Disk in System Preferences or by holding down the Option key at boot and selecting the drive. Once booted, you'll be able to install or upgrade El Capitan as you normally would.
El Capitan Bootable Usb Windows
Introduction
This project is a new and updated branch of the Yosemite tree and is targetted at OS X 10.11 El Capitan with SIP support, automatic installer detection and fake board-id injection for unsupported models of the MacPro and MacBook Pro.
Download
All downloads of boot.efi should be done from this project page. All other sources are unsupported.
Download your copy of the prebuild (32-bit) version of boot.efi for El Capitan (compiled on Microsoft Windows 10 with Microsoft Visual Studio 2015) with a black background and white Apple logo now, and verify the download by entering (either one) in a terminal window:
Or download the one for legacy hardware, with a grey background and logo for your Mac Pro and verify the download by entering (either one) in a terminal window:
Note: If the output is different, then your copy of boot.efi should not be used!
Compilation
Don't want a prebuilt copy of boot.efi then compile the source code yourself, with either Microsoft Visual Studio 2013 or 2015. The latter requires you to update the solution files, but that should be done automatically in the MS Visual Studio IDE.
Note: See also Compiling-Instructions
Thanks To
This project would not have been possible without the help of Peter Holbrook, Mike Boss and a number of other people. Peter did all compiling and Mike ran dozens of test builds that Peter pushed out over at forums.macrumors.com Awesome work guys. Job well done!
I'd also like to thank everyone else whoh helped with testing our nightly builds. Thank you so much!
Help
If you need help with the setup then please visit this macrumor thread. Developers, or people who need help with compiling boot.efi themself, can visit this macrumors developer thread.
Note: I myself don't own any unsupported Apple hardware with a 32-bit EFI implementation, so I can probably do not much for you, but there may be others to help you.
Bugs
Bugs can be reported here
Note: Please provide a clear step by step procedure to reproduce the bug. Thanks.
License
My work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License and as such you must add a link to this license. Even if you only use a download link. Also note the term 'NonCommercial' because I don't want to see my work end up anywhere else but here.
Note: 'Tiamo' released his work under a BSD-3-Clause license
Disclaimer
Copyright (c) 2014-2016, by Pike R. Alpha – All right reserved.