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by John W. Simek, Vice President of Sensei Enterprises, Inc.

USB Boot Drive for MacOS

October 8, 2019

Booting from a USB drive is a great way to reinstall an operating system. Most vendors do not supply software on an optical device and primarily opt for downloadable software. Windows users are pretty used to installing their operating system from downloaded files. What about Apple users? Ars Technica has a post that describes how to make your own bootable macOS 10.15 Catalina USB install drive. Here's what you need to get started.

  • "A Mac that you have administrator access to. We've created a USB stick from both Mojave and Catalina, but your experience with other versions may vary.
  • A 16GB or larger USB flash drive or a 16GB or larger partition on some other kind of external drive. A USB 3.0 drive will make things significantly faster, but an older USB 2.0 drive will work in a pinch; 8GB drives worked for Mojave and older versions of macOS, but the Catalina installer is just a little too large to fit.
  • The macOS 10.15 Catalina installer from the Mac App Store (in High Sierra or older macOS versions) or the Software Update preference pane in Mojave. The installer will delete itself when you install the operating system, but it can be re-downloaded if necessary.
  • If you want a GUI, take a look at Ben Slaney's Install Disk Creator from MacDaddy. There are other apps out there that do this, but this one is quick and simple."

There is much more detail in the post. As an example, you will need to know how to allow booting from an external drive. You'll also want to periodically download new Catalina installers as Apple rolls out updates.

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