Creating a bootable USB flash drive with OS X Yosemite: program selection and order of creation

The well-known company Apple, which is incredibly popular worldwide, has long to some extent isolated its devices (computers, tablets, smartphones) from the gadgets of other developers. Having developed their variations of operating systems (iOS for smartphones and tablets, macOS for all-in-one PCs and laptops), in fact, for many users, the possibility of interaction between users of Apple products from, for example, Android devices was cut off. This “conditional” identity sometimes leads to difficulties in installing or reinstalling the macOS operating system, including difficulties in creating a bootable media. But these difficulties are also conditional, since Apple has implemented many different tools with the most convenient and simple interface for updating the OS and creating bootable media with it. And what are these tools and how to use them and will be discussed in this article.

A method for creating a bootable USB flash drive with OS X Yosemite.

Download and install

To begin with, it should be said that OS X Yosemite is the eleventh version of OS X, which was presented in the middle of 2014 at the WWDC 2014 conference. Apple, for which a special thank you, almost immediately after the announcement (in October 2014) opened free access to download this version in the App Store. Therefore, if you need to create a bootable USB flash drive with OS X Yosemite, it is enough to download the operating system image on the App Store and carry out the following fairly simple manipulations:

  • Prepare a USB flash drive, which you plan to use as a bootable media in the future, taking into account that the installation will be fully formatted. Therefore, transfer all data that is important for preservation to another medium / storage device;
  • The simplest option for directly mounting the boot image of the OS to the media is to use a special utility called “DiskMaker X”, which can be downloaded for free from the official website of the developers - “//diskmakerx.com”;
  • If you have already downloaded the image of the operating system you need, then it will be saved in the "Programs" section, if not, then perform the specified download from the official Apple store;
  • Run the downloaded utility “DiskMaker X” and in the step with the choice of further actions, select “Yosemite DP” or another OS if you need it;

  • Further, the utility itself will scan the “Programs” folder and find the OS image downloaded earlier and prompt you to download it to the media. If the found option matches the desired one, click “Use this copy” (if this option is not suitable, click “Use another copy”) and manually specify the desired image;
  • Confirm that you agree with the full formatting of the selected media and wait until the boot process is complete;
  • Upon completion of the main procedure, you can select “Open startup disk preference” to open the created media, go back or donate funds to developers for the development of the project.

As can be seen from the above actions, there is nothing complicated and incomprehensible in them, everything is available and quite quickly, especially if the interface of the USB 3.0 port is used. Of course, this is not the only way to accomplish the task in question. As it was already said at the beginning of the article, Apple has integrated into the OS a lot of tools, which include certain commands for the Terminal, which implement the creation of a bootable USB flash drive. But first, you need to use the Disk Utility disk utility to prepare the future media for recording the boot image, which looks like this:

  • Open the utility, after inserting the USB flash drive into the appropriate slot, and select the required media to open the editor of its basic parameters;
  • Go to the “Disk partition” tab and in the “Partition diagram”, select “Section 1”;
  • Next, select the format "Mac OS Extended" and enter the name of a future bootable flash drive, for example, "JOBos";
  • Open the "Parameters" subsection and check that the "GUID Partition Scheme" is set;
  • Confirm all the settings and close the utility.

Now you need to go to the previously mentioned command for the Terminal. It looks like this:

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

IMPORTANT. Please note that in this command, instead of the highlighted word “JOBos”, which is an example of the name from the step above, you need to enter your own name that you specified during the training.

If you did not change anything, the name will be “OSXRecovery”, and the command, respectively, will look like this -

sudo '/ Applications / Install OS X Yosemite.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia' —volume '/ Volumes / OSXRecovery - applicationpath' / Applications / Install OS X Yosemite.app '–nointeraction

After executing the command, it remains only to wait for the installation process to complete and then begin to use the received device within the framework of your tasks.

Conclusion

So, in conclusion, it should be said that, despite the fact that the actions considered may seem confusing and strange to users of Windows OS, this process of Apple products is formulated and implemented with a greater user orientation, if only because the image is distributed is free.