how to create bootable external hard drive for imac 2009

Choose 'Reinstall OS X' from the OS X Utilities window and then press 'Continue' button, and then there is the OS X Mavericks screen with 'Continue' button.

And then connect a drive with at least 12 GB of free space. Hold down Command+R at startup to boot into recovery mode and you'll view the OS X Utilities window (see screenshot below). So, what we need to do is to grab the installer data safely during that process. And the installer data will be deleted very soon. When finishing download the data, OS X Recovery will restart your Mac and then install the OS. When Apple's servers verify your Mac, it will offer installer data for download. When using OS X Recovery to reinstall Mavericks, you Mac will contact Apple's servers, get identified to request Mavericks installer data. How to grab the installer data then? Here we go: Anyway, to have a bootable install drive only does good for you. OS X Recovery requires you to download over 5GB of data before you can reinstall Mavericks while a bootable installer drive doesn't because it already contains all necessary data but OS X Recovery not. For example, a bootable installer makes the installation much faster than OS X Recovery. But, in fact, a bootable installer drive is better than OS X Recovery. Theoretically, it is true that we don't need to make a bootable install drive if there is OS X Recovery. You might say why we need a bootable external hard drive then if the OS X Recovery can do the same job.

It enables you to boot your Mac into a special recovery mode to repair your hard drive, restore your drive from a backup, or reinstall OS X itself.

Note: OS X Recovery is a new feature of recent OS X version. Here we go.įirstly, we need to play a little trick to grab the installer data from OS X Recovery. You have to prepare yourself well for this because the way we are going to introduce to you needs more work than if you have purchased the Mac App Store version. If you got a newer Mac shipped with Mavericks, to create a bootable Mavericks install drive is not so easy because you don't have an easily downloadable version of the installer. And this article is especially for those who own a newer Mac that is shipped with OS X 10.9. In the article How to Create a Bootable Mavericks Install Drive, we give instructions creating a bootable Mavericks installer drive for those who purchased Mavericks from the Mac App Store. In a word, a bootable installer drive makes it faster and easier to install Mavericks on multiple Macs. In our previous article that How to Create a Bootable Mavericks Install Drive, we have listed many good reasons to create a bootable Mavericks install drive.

How to create bootable external hard drive for imac 2009