#How to make a bootable mac os x yosemite usb thumb drive install#
I found that I can format an SDXC card for Mac, install OS X on it, and boot the Mac from it. You can get one that is 64GB for under $40 these days (sometimes on sale for much less). If your Mac is recent enough to run Yosemite, it is likely to have an SDXC flash card slot. And most importantly, your current day-to-day startup disk is NOT affected.
When selecting a different volume, the installer does NOT erase itself, so you can repeat the process if you need to a new “clean install” of Yosemite. The installer then creates the Yosemite system on that volume. When running the installer, select a disk that is NOT your usual startup disk as your target. You start up normally and download the Yosemite installer (like with Mavericks). If you do the smart thing and install the Yosemite Beta on a volume (disk) that is NOT your usual day-to-day startup disk (“Macintosh HD”), you don’t need to do any of the stuff mentioned in this article. “And if your beta-testing Mac is experiencing problems, a bootable installer drive makes a handy emergency disk.”įrakes writes, “As with previous versions of OS X, it’s not difficult to create a bootable installer drive from the Yosemite beta installer, though the processes have changed slightly since Mavericks. “If you need to erase the drive on your test Mac before installing Yosemite, or start over at any time, you can use a dedicated installer drive to boot that Mac, erase its drive, and then install the OS,” Frakes writes.
“If you do decide to participate in the Yosemite beta program, I recommend creating a bootable installer drive, on an external hard drive or a thumb drive (USB stick), for many of the same reasons I recommend making a bootable Mavericks installer drive: If you want to install the Yosemite beta on multiple Macs, using a bootable installer drive can be more convenient than downloading or copying the entire installer to each computer,” Dan Frakes writes for Macworld.