On the left-hand pane, select the USB drive (not the partition under it, if any).Launch the “Disk Utility” to format the USB Flash drive.Plug in a USB flash drive of size 8GB or larger.# Close all Finder instances (and re-launch so settings take effect). # Configure Finder to show hidden system files.ĭefaults write AppleShowAllFiles TRUE Launch the “Terminal” app and run this command to move the downloaded installer app to your user’s “Downloads” folder: To keep that file, you will want to move it out of the Applications folder so it won’t be deleted after an upgrade. Note: If you run the Yosemite installer to upgrade your Mac, the downloaded installer file will be deleted automatically after the upgrade is completed. Launch “App Store” and search for “OS X Yosemite”. (If you want an earlier version like Mac OS X 10.9 Mavericks, you’ll need to get it from elsewhere.) It is the version currently available for download from the “App Store”.

The instructions I found that worked, using Disk Utility, were located at How to Make a Bootable OS X Mavericks USB Install Drive and How to Create a Bootable Install USB Drive of Mac OS X 10.10 Yosemite.įirst, download the latest Mac OS X version, which is 10.10 Yosemite. I tried several methods which failed to create a bootable USB flash drive before finding one that succeeded. You will need an 8GB USB flash drive for Mac OS X Yosemite or Mavericks. These instructions will also work for Mac OS X 10.9 Mavericks (excluding a Yosemite-specific step) and differ significantly from the instructions for creating a Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard installer.

In this post, I will go over instructions on how to create a bootable USB flash drive containing the Mac OS X 10.10 Yosemite installer. I followed the instructions below to successfully create a bootable installer for Mac OS X 10.11 El Capitan, which is the last version to support the 2008 Core 2 Duo Macbook Pro.

I needed to upgrade my sister’s 2008 Macbook Pro and found that the existing Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard did not support the “createinstallmedia” tool I got a “Failed to start erase of disk due to error (-9999, 0)” error. Update 2: The instructions below will work to manually create a Mac OS X 10.11 El Capitan USB installation drive. Update: Go to Install macOS Sierra Using Bootable USB Flash Drive if you want to install macOS 10.12 Sierra instead.

Yosemite boot usb