Question: Q: Failed to create bootable USB MacOS Catalina on a OS X Yosemite macbook More Less Apple Footer This site contains user submitted content, comments and opinions and is for informational purposes only. Use Terminal to create a bootable installer. Another way to create a bootable installer for macOS is to use Terminal. Make sure that you have the installation files on your Mac before trying this step out. How to make a bootable USB on Mac: Open Terminal by following Applications → Utilities → Terminal. Connect the USB drive to your Mac. Excellent Create A Bootable Macos Catalina Usb Install Drive to Copy in 2021. Who hasn’t dreamed of getting a mane of lengthy create a bootable macos catalina usb install drive hair? It’s no surprise these hairstyles are trending in the mean time. Within the Applications folder, you will find the installer for macOS Catalina. It will have a name similar to “Install macOS Catalina Beta” or “Install macOS Catalina,” depending on whether you’re using the beta or the release version. Once you locate the installer, right-click on it and select Show Package Contents from the popup menu. Create macOS Catalina Bootable USB on Windows: Required Files macOS Catalina DMG file for a clean installation. (Download links have been provided below) A good internet connection to download the macOS Catalina DMG file.

1. Create Bootable Usb Macos Catalina On Windows
2. Create Bootable Macos Catalina Usb

Apple hasn’t shipped operating systems on physical media in a full decade, but there are still good reasons to want a reliable old USB stick for macOS Catalina. Luckily, it's not hard to make one—either with a handy graphical user interface or some light Terminal use. 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.

If you want to use this USB installer with newer Macs as they are released, you'll want to periodically re-download new Catalina installers and make new install drives. Apple rolls support for newer hardware into new macOS point releases as they come out, so this will help keep your install drive as universal and versatile as possible.

There's also one new consideration for newer Macs with Apple's T2 controller chip—as of this writing, that list includes the iMac Pro, the 2018 Mac Mini, the 2018 MacBook Air, and 2018 and 2019 MacBook Pros, though Apple keeps an updated list here. Among this chip's many security features is one that disallows booting from external drives by default. To re-enable this feature, hold down Command-R while your Mac reboots to go into Recovery Mode and use the Startup Security Utility to 'allow booting from external media.' If you're trying to install an older version of macOS, you may also need to go from Full Security to Medium Security to enable booting, but if you're just trying to install the current version of macOS, the Full Security option should be just fine. And if you're just doing an upgrade install rather than a clean install, you can run the Catalina installer from the USB drive from within your current installation of macOS, no advanced tweaking required.

The easy way

Once you've obtained all of the necessary materials, connect the USB drive to your Mac and launch the Install Disk Creator. This app is basically just a GUI wrapper for the terminal command, so it should be possible to make install disks for versions of macOS going all the way back to Lion. In any case, it will work just fine for our purposes.

Install Disk Creator will automatically detect macOS installers on your drive and suggest one for you, displaying its icon along with its path. You can navigate to a different installer if you want, and you can also pick from all the storage devices and volumes currently connected to your Mac through the drop-down menu at the top of the window. Once you're ready to go, click 'Create Installer' and wait. A progress bar across the bottom of the app will tell you how far you have to go, and a pop-up notification will let you know when the process is done. This should only take a few minutes on a USB 3.0 flash drive in a modern Mac, though using USB 2.0 will slow things down.

The only slightly less-easy way

The Install Disk Creator is just a wrapper for the terminal command to create macOS install disks, so if you’re comfortable formatting your USB drive yourself and opening a Terminal window, it’s almost as easy to do it this way. Assuming that you have the macOS Catalina installer in your Applications folder and you have a Mac OS Extended (Journaled)-formatted USB drive (which is to say, HFS+ and notAPFS) named 'Untitled' mounted on the system, you can create a Catalina install drive using the following command.

sudo /Applications/Install macOS Catalina.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/Untitled

The command will erase the disk and copy the install files over. Give it some time, and your volume will soon be loaded up with not just the macOS installer but also an external recovery partition that may come in handy if your hard drive dies and you're away from an Internet connection. If you would like to create an install drive for a macOS version other than Catalina, just tweak the paths above to refer to Mojave or High Sierra instead.

Whichever method you use, you should be able to boot from your new USB drive either by changing the default Startup Disk in System Preferences or by holding down the Option key at boot and selecting the drive. Once booted, you'll be able to install or upgrade Catalina as you normally would. You can also use Safari, Disk Utility, or Time Machine from the recovery partition to restore backups or troubleshoot.

You can use a USB drive (external hard drive or flash drive) as a startup disk from which to install the Mac operating system. This is called a bootable USB drive with macOS installer. To upgrade macOS or reinstall macOS does not require a bootable USB drive with macOS installer, but it can be useful if you want to perform a clean installation of macOS or when you want to install macOS on multiple Mac computers without having to download the installer each time. In this tutorial, I’ll show you how to create a bootable USB drive with macOS Catalina installer.

Let’s begin

Creating a bootable USB drive with macOS Catalina installer is a really easy process. Now, step by step guide.

Download macOS Catalina

We can get macOS Catalina from the App Store. For this, just browse to the macOS Catalina page on the App Store. Then click the GET button or iCloud download icon.

Create Bootable Usb Macos Catalina On Windows

Note! It takes time to download the macOS Catalina installer app, so make sure that you have a reliable Internet connection. If you’re using a Mac notebook computer, plug it into AC power.

macOS Catalina download directly to our Applications folder as an app named Install macOS Catalina. If the installer app opens after downloading, quit it without continuing installation.

Make sure that you have the complete “Install macOS Catalina.app” file by getting info on the file. For this simply select the file and click the Spacebar key (or right-click on the file and choose “Get Info”). The complete installer should be around 8.1 GB rather than the tiny (just tens of megabytes) incomplete installer that requires additional downloads.

Note! If you have problems downloading the complete macOS Catalina installer app, then read this article, it should help.

Create the bootable installer of macOS Catalina

In this solution we will use the Terminal app. You do not need to download and install it, because it is already built into every macOS.

Connect your USB drive (external hard drive or flash drive) that you want to use as a bootable USB drive with macOS Catalina installer.

Note! It’s best to disconnect any other external hard drives or flash drives so you don’t mix them up.

Note! Make sure that the USB drive has at least 12GB of available storage.

Note! Make sure that the USB drive is formatted as Mac OS Extended (Journaled). If it isn’t, open up “Disk Utility” and format is so it is. Before you do so, back up any important data on that drive.

Launch the Terminal app from the Utilities folder of your Applications folder, or use Spotlight to find it.

Type the following command and press the Enter key to create the bootable installer.

Create Bootable Macos Catalina Usb

Note! This step assumes that the macOS Catalina installer app is still in your Applications folder. If it has a different path, replace /Applications/Install macOS Catalina.app/ in this command with the path to your macOS Catalina installer app.

Note! This step assumes that MyVolume is the name of the USB drive (external hard drive or flash drive) you’re using. If it has a different name, replace MyVolume in this command with the name of your USB drive.

When prompted, type your computer administrator password and press the Enter key.

Note! Terminal doesn’t show any characters as you type your password. This is normal Terminal behavior.

When prompted, type Y and press the Enter key to confirm that you want to erase the USB drive.

Let the command line do its work and don’t interrupt it until you see the final line that says Done. This can take a while, so be patient. When it’s done, the USB drive will have the same name as the installer you downloaded, i.e. “Install macOS Catalina”.

You can now quit the Terminal app and eject the USB drive.

Conclusion

That’s it, you’re done. Now you have the bootable USB drive with macOS Catalina installer created and ready for use. Just insert your bootable USB drive with macOS Catalina installer into any Mac that compatible with the macOS Catalina, then launch the installer by holding down the Option key while booting the Mac. So simple isn’t it?

I hope this article has helped you learn how to create a bootable USB drive with macOS Catalina installer. If this article has helped you then please leave a comment

Thanks for reading!

Arthur is a designer and full stack software engineer. He is the founder of Space X-Chimp and the blog My Cyber Universe. His personal website can be found at arthurgareginyan.com.