How to Make OS X Yosemite Installer USB Drive

OS X Yosemite final version is available to download from App Store. Download and update it from OS X App Store or create a Bootable installer drive so you can easily use this installer USB drive to clean install OS X Yosemite or to install OS X 10.10 on multiple computer without downloading again and again on different computers. There a re few requirement before start following this guide.

See also: Dual Boot OS X Yosemite and OS X Mavericks

Requirements

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  • Check, Is your Mac capable to run OS X Yosemite?
  • You need a 8 GB or higher capacity USB drive or a external hard disk.
  • Save data from your USB or Hard disk drive because we need o format it.
  • OS X Yosemite.app installer file.

Prepare USB Drive for OS X Yosmite

First we need to format USB drive using built-in tool Disk Utility. Run Disk Utility tool from Applications > Utilities.

Here on Disk Utility interface,

  1. Select USB drive from left-side.
  2. Click the Partition Tab.
  3. Click Partition Layout drop-down and select “1 Partition” option.
  4. Enter the partition name “osxyosemite” and select “Mac OS Extended (Journaled)” from Format drop-down menu.
  5. Click the Options button
os-x-yosemite-bootable-create-partition

Select “GUID partition Table” and click the OK button and then hit Apply and create a partition. This will take some time to format and create a new partition.

os-x-yosemite-bootable-create-partition-1

Make OS X Yosemite Installer USB Drive

Download “Install OS X Yosemite.app” from App Store, its  a big download so make sure you have a good internet download speed.

Once downloaded the setup this will start the installer automatically so quit the installer setup.

Open Applications folder and confirm the “Install OS X Yosemite.app” file is available there.

Burn OS X Yosemite on USB

To start the making bootable USB drive you need to open Mac Terminal. Press CMD+Space from keyboard, find and run Terminal app.

Once Terminal is running, copy and paste the following command in Terminal and hit the Enter key to execute the command. Here you may need to enter the admin password, If prompted for the password enter the administrator password and hit Enter key.

sudo /Applications/Install\ OS\ X\ Yosemite.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/osxyosemite --applicationpath /Applications/Install\ OS\ X\ Yosemite.app --nointeraction

This will start making OS X Yosemite installer USB Drive and will take about 20 minuets, so be patient and don’t remove the drive from computer and also stop doing any other task while making installer USB.

Once you see Done message on Terminal window, you are good to go and install fresh OS  X Yosemite or even use this bootable installer USB drive on different computer to install OS X Yosemite.

Boot from USB Drive

To boot form USB drive you need to reboot you Mac and press Option key while rebooting on start-up. You will see options to select drive to boot from.

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