Mac os boot disk image. Installing Mac OS on an iMac using a boot disk
The Mac OS operating system is a more stable system than Windows, but still sometimes, even this OS needs to be installed from scratch. For example, you replaced hard drive or you want to install another version, or you updated to the latest version over the old one and now you are faced with problems: it is unstable Wi-Fi network, constant problems with the operation of programs - they slow down, crash, and the like. This may be fixed with the next system update, or maybe not. Therefore, if you want Mac OS to work correctly and stably, you need to install it on a clean disk, completely deleting the old one.
How to create a bootable USB flash drive with macOS (OS X)
There are several options:
All methods are free and quite simple. To work, we will need a flash drive of 8 GB or larger and an image of the operating system that you are going to install - this could be Mountain Lion (10.8), Mavericks (10.9), Yosemite (10.10), El Capitan (10.11), Sierra (10.12), High Sierra (10.13), Mojave (10.14) or Catalina (10.15). All of them can be downloaded on the Internet, and the latest version of the macOS system can always be downloaded from the official store Mac applications App Store, and for free.
And so, let's assume that you have a flash drive and you downloaded the operating system image. Let's start directly with the process of creating a bootable USB flash drive with Mac OS X on board.
Method No. 1
Creating a Bootable OS X USB Flash Drive Using DiskMaker X
This method is the simplest and requires the least effort. Program DiskMaker X is multifunctional and completely free, with its help you can create USB flash drive with completely different systems, from OS X Lion to macOS Catalina. You can download the latest version of DiskMaker X on the official website of the program developers. You can download previous versions from the Downloads section.
All the steps for creating a flash drive with macOS (OS X) are the same and do not differ from each other in any way, the only difference is in the versions of the programs with which it is made. Using this example, we will create a bootable USB flash drive for Yosemite.
Step 1 Download the version of DiskMaker X 6 from the official website, mount the downloaded file and move the application to the “Programs” folder
Step 2 Launch the copied program and click Open. If you have not downloaded the latest version of the program, a download window will appear in front of you. latest version. Click Not now, thanks, since we are creating a flash drive with OS X Yosemite, and in each version of the DiskMaker X program, you can only choose from the three latest macOS, and after Yosemite there are already 5
You can see which version of DiskMaker X is suitable for creating the required bootable flash drive at this link.
Step 3 A window will appear asking you to select the operating system that we can load onto the flash drive. Depending on the version of DiskMaker X, the choice of systems may vary. In our version, these are Yosemite (10.10), El Capitan (10.11) and Sierra (10.12). Choosing Yosemite (10.10)
Step 4 Specify where the system image itself is located, if you downloaded it from the Mac App Store, then it will be in your “Programs” folder and DiskMaker X will find it itself and you will only need to click Use this copy
and if OS X was downloaded from the Internet, then you need to indicate the location where it is located by clicking on the button Select an OS X Installation App... or Select an macOS Instalation App... (for new versions)
Before selecting, do not forget to mount the .dmg file and copy the file from macOS (OS X) from it, since if you try to select a system image in .dmg format, the program will simply not select it
Step 5 If you have an 8 GB flash drive, select An 8 GB USB thumb drive, otherwise Another kind of disk
Step 6 Select the flash drive directly on which you are going to record and press the Choose this disk button
Step 9 After this, the process of creating a bootable USB flash drive will begin, which will take from 10 to 20 minutes, after which you will be notified with a message
Congratulations. Bootable USB flash drive for Mac OS X is ready!
Method No. 2
Creating a Bootable OS X USB Flash Drive Using Install Disk Creator
Compared to the previous method, this one is even simpler, since all operations are performed in one program window:
Step 1 Launch the program Install Disk Creator, you can download it from the official website, developed by MacDaddy
Step 2 Select the USB drive that should become bootable
Step 3 Specify the location on the disk where the installer with the macOS (OS X) system is located. If the image was downloaded from the Mac App Store (it is in the “Programs” folder), then the program will find it itself, if not, then you need to click the Select the OS X Installer button and specify the path
Step 4 Click Create Installer and enter our administrator password to get started
Then you just have to wait a little while the Mac OS X bootable USB flash drive is created.
Method No. 3
Creating a Bootable OS X USB Flash Drive Using "createinstallmedia"
This option is a little more complicated. Here we will do everything ourselves, without the help of third-party programs.
First we need to prepare a USB flash drive for recording.
Preparing a flash drive in OS X Mavericks and OS X Yosemite
Step 1 Open the program Disk Utility, to do this, go to the Programs → Utilities folder. Connect the USB flash drive and select it in the left panel of the program
Step 2 In the right menu, select the Disk Partition tab, where you need to format the flash drive. For this on the left Partition scheme in the drop-down menu select “Partition 1”, and on the right specify the format for the USB flash drive "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)", name it as you wish
Step 3 Now, at the bottom of the window, click on the Settings button and select GUID Partition Scheme and click OK
Step 4 Having selected the partition scheme, in the lower right corner of the program click on the Apply button
Disk Utility will display a warning window that all data on the flash drive will be erased, agree to this and click Partition Disk
Preparing a flash drive in OS X El Capitan, macOS Sierra, High Sierra, Mojave and Catalina
Step 1 Connect the USB flash drive and open the program Disk Utility, and then select it in the left panel of the program
Step 2 In the top menu, click Erase to redistribute the flash drive to the Mac OS system
Step 3 Now in the field Name give the flash drive a name of your choice in the field Format select format file system "OS X Extended (Journaled)", and in the field Scheme — "GUID Partition Scheme" and click Erase
When we have prepared the USB flash drive, let's start copying the files of the OS X operating system onto it. Before doing this, do not forget to copy installation file from the OS to the “Programs” folder
Launch Terminal, also from the “Utilities” folder and enter the following command (don’t forget to change the name of your flash drive):
for OS X Mavericks
sudo "/Applications/Install OS X Mavericks.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia" --volume "/Volumes/ name of your flash drive" --applicationpath "/Applications/Install OS X Mavericks.app" --nointeraction
for OS X Yosemite
sudo "/Applications/Install OS X Yosemite.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia" --volume "/Volumes/ name of your flash drive" --applicationpath "/Applications/Install OS X Yosemite.app" --nointeraction
for OS X El Capitan
sudo "/Applications/Install OS X El Capitan.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia" --volume "/Volumes/ name of your flash drive" --applicationpath "/Applications/Install OS X El Capitan.app" --nointeraction
For macOS Sierra
sudo "/Applications/Install macOS Sierra.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia" --volume "/Volumes/ name of your flash drive" --applicationpath "/Applications/Install macOS Sierra.app" --nointeraction
for macOS High Sierra
sudo "/Applications/Install macOS High Sierra.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia" --volume "/Volumes/ name of your flash drive"
for macOS Mojave
sudo "/Applications/Install macOS Mojave.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia" --volume "/Volumes/ name of your flash drive"
for macOS Catalina
sudo "/Applications/Install macOS Catalina.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia" --volume "/Volumes/ name of your flash drive"
Press Enter and enter our password account, to start creating a bootable flash drive, press Y on the keyboard, after which the copying process will begin
Erasing Disk: 0%... 10%... 20%... 30%...100%...
Copying installer files to disk…
Copy complete.
Making disk bootable...
Copying boot files...
Copy complete.
Done.
After 10-15 minutes, the bootable USB flash drive with Mac OS is ready for use
Method No. 4
Creating a Bootable OS X USB Flash Drive Using Disk Utility on Yosemite and Below
This method is the last and most labor-intensive, since here you need to do much more operations than in the previous ones. Plus, this method cannot be used in all macOS - starting from El Capitan and higher, this is no longer possible, since Apple has cut down the capabilities of the Disk Utility program.
As in method 3, we need to prepare our USB flash drive for copying the operating system onto it. Therefore, we prepare it as described above. (cm. )
Go to the Contents → SharedSupport folder and mount the InstallESD.dmg file by double-clicking on it
defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles true;killall Finder
To again disable showing hidden files, you need to specify “false” instead of “true”
Now we see hidden files, open the InstallESD.dmg disk we mounted. We need the BaseSystem.dmg file, mount it by double-clicking on it
We return to the open disk utility and go to the Recover tab, where we drag BaseSystem.dmg into the Source field, and the previously created section of our flash drive into the Destination field. Now click on the Restore button and enter the computer administrator password. The procedure for creating a boot disk takes about 10 minutes, after which we close the disk utility
As soon as the files are copied, the flash drive will be mounted automatically. Open it in Finder and go to the System → Installation folder, where we need to delete the alias (shortcut) to the Packages folder
After this, all we have to do is copy the original Packages folder, which is located on the previously mounted OS X Install ESD image; we deleted the alias (shortcut) of the same name into that folder from there. Once copying is complete, our bootable USB flash drive with Mac OS X is ready!
Method No. 4
Creating a bootable macOS USB flash drive in Windows 10, 8 and Windows 7
If for some reason you were unable to create a bootable USB flash drive with the system in macOS, then you can do it from under Windows. You will need the TransMac program; you can download it from the developer’s official website. The program is paid, but it has a trial period of 15 days!
Step 1 Run the TransMac program as Administrator (click on the program icon with the right mouse button and select Run as administrator) and click the Run button. When using the trial period, you will have to wait 10 seconds for the button to appear. Step 4 In the window that appears, click the button... and select the system image downloaded in .dmg format, then click Yes to begin the procedure for creating a bootable USB flash drive
In a few minutes your bootable USB flash drive will be ready, but remember that the created flash drive is intended only for installing the system on Mac computers
As you can see, creating a bootable flash drive with the macOS (OS X) operating system can be done in different ways, from easy: by pressing a couple of keys, to more difficult. You can use the method convenient for you.
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We have looked at how to command line write down the installation DVD-disk OS X Lion. Some readers noted that it would be nice to know how to do the same, but for USB-disk. And really, don’t leave the owners MacBook Air and the latest Mac mini deprived. :)
Let's get started. Let me make a reservation right away that to successfully create an installation disk we will need disk space of USB- the disk is a little larger than 4GB, and therefore flash drives with a capacity of more than 4GB, for example, 8GB, are suitable for these purposes. In my example, a 16GB flash drive is used.
We connect the flash drive to the computer. First we need to determine what device the connected disk is known to the system as. To do this we open Terminal.app and enter the following command:
Information about all disks known to the system will be displayed. It looks something like this (all images are clickable):
From the information output from this command, we need to understand what belongs to what. In principle, this is not difficult to understand. The device /dev/disk0 is yours local disk, with OS X installed. And the information we need related to our flash drive is highlighted in red in the picture. In my case (and most likely in yours) this is /dev/disk1 .
Now we need to create a disk with GPT-partitioning, with one partition and file system HFS+. This is done with the following command:
diskutil partitionDisk /dev/disk1 1 GPTFormat HFS+ Lion 16G
Where /dev/disk1 is what was highlighted in red in the picture above, 1 is creating one partition, GPTFormat is an instruction to create GPT-disk layout, HFS+ - file system for the partition being created, Lion - partition label (can be arbitrary), 16G - size of the partition being created (must match the size of your flash drive, correct if necessary).
The result will look something like this:
As you can see, in fact, two partitions were created on our disk, not one. The first partition with ID disk1s1 is the system partition EFI about two hundred megabytes in size, do not pay attention to it. We need a second (large) partition with the identifier disk1s2 (highlighted in red in the picture).
It is this identifier (or rather its full version of the entry /dev/disk1s2) that we will need for the next final command, which will create the installation disk:
asr restore --source /Applications/Install\ Mac\ OS\ X\ Lion.app/Contents/SharedSupport/InstallESD.dmg --target /dev/disk1s2 --erase --noprompt
Once again, please note that in this command we use the disk identifier /dev/disk1s2 (highlighted in red).
Upon completion of the team’s work, we will get what we were looking for - installation disk OS X Lion.
You can use macOS not only on a MacBook, but also on regular computer with Windows. Next, we will tell you how to install macOS on a PC and what programs you will need for this. After this, you will be able to use all the features of the Apple operating system.
Installation Features
There are several ways to install macOS on a regular PC. Each has its own characteristics, so read them carefully and choose the one you need:
- As the main operating system. Then you can use all the features of OS X right on your PC. All computer resources (volume hard drive) will be focused on the selected OS.
- Second operating system along with Windows. OS X will be used as an additional one. After starting the computer, you can choose which system to boot (Linux, Windows or OS). It will not be possible to use all the capabilities of the PC (HDD capacity).
- Inside Windows, using virtual machine. To do this, you will need special software and distribution kits of the required OS. The method allows you to simultaneously work with several operating systems, manage available system resources (for example, determine how much RAM will receive OS).
In all cases, you will need a distribution kit to install the operating system. 
If you are going to install OS X as the main or additional OS, you will have to create a bootable USB flash drive or use a ready-made disk with macOS.
Preparing a bootable OS X flash drive
Bootable USB flash drive - regular Flash drive, on which the distribution kit with the operating system is recorded. In our case, it will be OS X. You can create it from Windows or another computer (Linux or Mac). In all cases the methods will be different. To create a flash drive with macOS on a Windows PC, follow these steps:
After all the necessary files and programs have been downloaded, you can proceed to the next step - creating a bootable USB flash drive. To do this, you will additionally need a USB drive with a memory capacity of at least 8GB.
Creating a bootable USB flash drive
Installing macOS X consists of several steps, one of which is creating a bootable USB flash drive or disk. Without this change operating system it won't work. Therefore, next we will tell you how to do it using the free BootDiskUtility utility:
Wait for the operation to complete. Once the operating system is recorded, the flash drive can be used as a boot drive to install macOS.
If you want to install macOS on Windows as a second operating system, you don't need to completely format the disk.
Installing macOS
Installing the macOS operating system on a PC begins with creating a bootable USB flash drive. Therefore, when the USB drive is ready, you can move on to the next step. To begin installation, follow these steps:
Depending on technical characteristics computer and other features of the operating system, as a rule, the process takes no more than 20 minutes. Now you know how to install on macOS computer instead of Windows 10 and what is needed for this.
Installing the macOS X operating system on a PC is not only downloading, but also setting up the OS. After unpacking is completed, you need to correctly configure the main parameters. 
To do this, follow these steps:
- From the list, select the language in which the device will be registered and click Continue.
- Specify your keyboard layout. If you are not using a Mac, it is recommended to select “Russian - PC”.
- If you have not previously used other Apple devices and you do not have backup copies, then in the “Information transfer” block select “ Don't transfer data to Macbook" and click the Continue button.
- If you have an Apple ID, log in using your account information. This setting can be configured at any other time, so click Don't sign in.
- Accept the terms of the license agreement and create a user account. These are common measures to protect data stored on a computer. Therefore, if necessary, set a password.
- Select your time zone and check the box next to “Do not register.”
Most of specified parameters you can change on macOS later, through the menu " Settings" This may require you to enter your administrator account and Apple ID information. If necessary, set up synchronization and backup.
We use a virtual machine
If installing the macOS operating system on a PC as the main or additional one is not suitable, then you can use the capabilities of a MacBook through a virtual machine. To do this, follow these steps:
Installing a macOS distribution from a flash drive takes no more than 40 minutes. But if you don’t plan to use the operating system too actively, then you can make do with the image in a virtual machine. Using a virtual machine you can boot other operating systems.
Conclusion
This article talked about how to install macOS on a PC using necessary programs. There are several installation options, and which one to use is up to you. We hope our article will help you achieve your plans faster and easier.
Video on the topic
Despite the fact that Apple has provided the possibility of installing the system from hidden section on your hard drive, do not neglect the opportunity to burn the installation image to a DVD or flash drive and feel protected from any unforeseen situations. Plus, you won't have to spend at least$69 on , which only goes on sale in August.
To implement this plan, we will need Lion downloaded from the Mac App Store, a blank DVD or flash drive with a capacity exceeding 4 GB, and 30 minutes of free time. Also, be sure to make sure that you have copied all of the data from your chosen flash drive. important information(if there is one). So let's get started.
We go to the directory with installed programs, we find the application there Mac installation OS X Lion.app (if it is not there, you will have to download it again from) and select in context menu"Show package contents" item.
In the window that opens, you should travel through the internal directory structure and go to the SharedSupport folder.
We are interested in the first file, which is 3.74 GB in size. If you want to create a bootable DVD, just take any application that can write DMG images and use it to burn InstallESD.dmg to disk (just copy it to at least the Desktop first).
Otherwise, double-click on this file with the left mouse button and wait until the mounted image called Mac OS X Install ESD appears on the screen:
It's time to insert the USB flash drive into the computer and run Disk Utility, which is located in the Programs > Utilities folder. Now in the sidebar select our flash drive, and on the right - the tab Erase.
In the field Format you should select the file system type “Mac OS Extended (Journaled)” in the Name enter something meaningful and press the button Erase. The formatting operation will take some time (depending on the size of the flash drive).
There is very little left to do - restore our connected InstallESD.dmg image to the USB flash drive. To do this, you need to select the flash drive again in side menu and click on the tab Restore.
In the field Source drag the image icon called Mac OS X Install ESD, and in the field Purpose- our newly formatted flash drive.
Check several times that you have not mixed up the fields, and also that you have not selected any desired flash drive as the destination. If everything is indicated correctly, then feel free to press the button Restore and you can go for a walk:
That's it! Now, when the need arises, all you have to do is insert the flash drive into the USB port of your computer and, after turning it on, press and hold the Option (Alt) key to select the boot partition.
You may be wondering which is better: burning a DVD or creating an installation flash drive? I think that the last option is more acceptable, and owners of new Mac minis don’t have to choose at all :)
