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There are times when having a bootable USB drive for Mac is important. There is also an argument to be made to have an Apple backup available at all times. Here, we’ll walk you though why you may want to do so, and how to backup Mac.

A backup plan for all times

1. Launch Disk utility and connect a USB drive to the Mac Select the USB drive from the left menu and click on “Erase” tab, choose “Mac OS X Extended (Journaled)” as the format, then click on the “Erase” button in the corner Now select the formatted USB drive from the left side and click on the “Restore” tab.
2. Use your USB drive right-click on it and select format disk format this will format the USB drive so that it can be used to store the Mac OS operating system. One thing you need took care of that the USB drive needs in GPT partition in order to work on a Mac computer otherwise it won’t boot.

Use the Restore Disk Image to Drive dialog box to browse for the DMG file with the installation files for Mac OS X Yosemite in this case, and click the OK button to create a bootable USB of the operating system. Now, you’ll have to wait a long time.

Get Setapp for all the tools you need to backup data and handle bootable drives for seamless security on Mac.

What is a Bootable USB or External Drive?

Simply stated, a bootable USB Mac drive is one that has a version (or versions) of macOS available on a disk that isn’t your machine. Whether it’s an external hard drive or a USB ‘thumb’ drive, both are considered bootable drives.

For the sake of clarity, we’ll simply refer to any external drive as a USB drive.

Before you begin, you’ll need to download the macOS version you’d like to use directly from Apple. It will download directly to your Applications folder; if your Mac starts to try to download and install the version of macOS you downloaded, simply quit the installation process.

How to Backup Mac to External Hard Drive

Curious how to create a bootable external drive for Mac? We’ve got you covered. First, you’ll need a USB drive, preferably one that is formatted to macOS Extended for any macOS backup to serve as your startup disk creator. Once you’ve done that, connect the USB drive to your machine, open the Terminal application on your Mac. Depending on the version of macOS you downloaded, enter one of the following commands:

• Big Sur beta: sudo /Applications/Install macOS Big Sur Beta.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/MyVolume
• Catalina: sudo /Applications/Install macOS Catalina.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/MyVolume
• Mojave: sudo /Applications/Install macOS Mojave.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/MyVolume
• High Sierra: sudo /Applications/Install macOS High Sierra.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/MyVolume
• Sierra: sudo /Applications/Install macOS Sierra.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/MyVolume --applicationpath /Applications/Install macOS Sierra.app
• El Capitan: sudo /Applications/Install OS X El Capitan.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/MyVolume --applicationpath /Applications/Install OS X El Capitan.app

Note: If your USB drive has a unique name, replace ‘MyVolume’ in the command with the name of your USB drive. If you read the command, you’ll see your Mac is taking the version of macOS you downloaded from your Applications folder and placing it on your USB drive.

After entering the command, do the following:

• Press ‘Return’ or ‘Enter’ on your keyboard
• When prompted in Terminal, enter your administrator’s password
• Press ‘Return’ or ‘Enter’ on your keyboard
• When prompted in Terminal, type ‘y’ to confirm you’d like to erase the USB drive.

When finished, Terminal will show the volume has the same name as the installer you downloaded. You can now quit terminal and eject your USB Drive.

How to Boot Your Mac from a USB Drive

Now that you’ve created a bootable installer for your Mac, you can use it to boot a Mac using a fresh install of macOS! Here’s how:

• Plug the bootable USB drive into your Mac
• Open Startup Manager (or Startup Disk)
• Select your USB drive from the list
• Press ‘Restart’

Your mac will now start up in recovery mode, using the version of macOS you downloaded. From here, it may ask you to choose your language, set up a WiFi network, and other startup functions. When prompted, select ‘Install macOS’ from the Utilities window, then click ‘Continue’ and follow any on-screen directions. This is how you install macOS from a USB.

Don’t Forget to Backup Your Files!

Before starting the process, be sure to back your files and folders up! You can do this manually by digging through your files and loading them onto a separate USB drive, but there’s a better way.

Get rid of duplicates and junk

CleanMyMac X takes care of it in one scan. Use the app to free up disk space before running any installations.

CleanMyMacX is an app that helps optimize your Mac for performance, and also gets rid of duplicate files. We highly suggest running this prior to any installation of macOS from a bootable USB drive.

Backups are best accomplished using Disk Drill, which both backs up your files and folders (as well as applications) and saves them to an external source. It even checks for lost files so nothing goes missing accidentally.

One of the best backup and cloning apps is Get Backup Pro. It creates backups of your hard drive, complete with files and folders, and saves them to an external USB drive. It’s a lot like Apple’s Time Machine, but allows much better control, and has a better user interface.

Get Backup Pro also compresses your backups, allows for scheduling of automatic backups, and allows you to recover from an external drive onto any computer.

Conclusion

Having a USB drive with a ‘clean’ version of macOS is always a good idea. When things go amiss, it’s nice to have an easy way to start from scratch.

But this doesn’t transfer files, which is why we select Disk Drill and/or Get Backup Pro. Utilizing one (or both) will help your files stay somewhere safe, so you never have to worry. We also advocate for using CleanMyMacX before any backup, which helps ensure your system – and backups – are optimized.

Luckily, all three are available as part of a free seven-day trial of Setapp, along with dozens of other great apps for Mac. Give it a shot!

Meantime, prepare for all the awesome things you can do with Setapp.

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If you’re using both Windows and macOS, you’ve to deal with when mac refuses to boot. The reason behind can be from a number of things that could go wrong. This includes system failure, bad updates, power failure, hardware failure. Unless there is a hardware problem that only can be diagnosed at the apple center you can fix your Apple computer.

Make External Drive Bootable Mac

It is an excellent practice always to have a bootable macOS USB, which you can easily create using macOS operating system. But since we’re here, you probably can want to make bootable USB using Windows 10. Let’s be real, and there are more Windows computers compared to MAC. Fortunately, you can use a Windows computer to create a bootable USB flash drive.

In this article, we’ll help you with the instructions to create a bootable MacOS USB installation media from a Windows 10 computer. So that you can use that USB to install or reinstall (upgrade) Apple’s MacOS. You can create a macos Catalina/sierra bootable USB using this guide to fix your operating system.

What’s needed?

You will need a few things before you get started. The first essential thing in it is a USB drive would be awesome if you use a USB 3.0, but you can get the work done using slow USB as well. So, in contrast, you need these following things.

1. One high-quality USB flash drive with 16GB of storage.
2. TransMac software.
3. MacOS operating system image (DMG file).

How to Create a macos Catalina bootable usb

The guide is simple and straightforward if you follow thiese step.

Download and install TransMac on your Windows PC. It’s paid software with 15-day trial, so you can use it within the time to create a bootable MacOS USB flash drive. If you like the software and to support the developer you can buy the full version.

Plug the USB drive to your Windows computer that you’ll be using to fix your MacOS. And we are going to tell you something straightforward – backup if things stored in USB Drive.

Step 1. Open the TransMac, and select Run as administrator. If you’re using the trial version, wait 15 seconds, and click Run.

Step 2. Use your USB drive right-click on it and select format disk format this will format the USB drive so that it can be used to store the Mac OS operating system. One thing you need took care of that the USB drive needs in GPT partition in order to work on a Mac computer otherwise it won’t boot.

When it prompts select a name for your USB it doesn’t matter but just do it and click ok. If the formatting completed successfully, click OK to continue.

Step 3. Again from the left sidebar right-click on the USB drive and select restore with disk image.

Step 4. Now browse to the location where the Mac OS system image file is located and click ok to load it.

Step 5. Click Yes to create the macOS USB bootable media.

It will take a few minutes to complete the process because the Mac Operating System is larger than any other operating systems like Windows and LINUX in size. Now plug the USB drive to Mac computer in order to install, install or upgrade the operating system to the latest version of Mac OS, which can be Sierra or later.

THE TOOL CAN

• Apple File System (APFS) volume read support.
• Open Mac APFS/HFS/HFS+ format disk drives, flash drives, CD/DVD/Blu-ray media, HD floppies, dmg, dmgpart, sparsebundle and sparseimage files.
• Copy files to Mac HFS+ disks and dmg images.
  Format as HFS+ for Mac .
• Save and restore images of disks and flash drives.
• Create, compress, expand and split dmg files.
• Built in burner functionality to burn ISO and dmg files directly to CD/DVD/Blu-Ray.
• Read Mac multisession and hybrid CDs.
• View partition layout.

How to create a GPT partition on a USB flash drive

If the USB flash drive is not working using TransMac, it could be still a partition problem. In this case, you want to redo the entire process again, but this time use the following steps to use the Diskpart command-line utility on Windows to create the appropriate GPT partition.

1. Open Command Prompt as an administrator. Type cmd in run dialog or open it from the start menu.
2. Type the diskpart command and press Enter. This will display that is connected to your computer.
3. Enter the list disk command to view all drives connected to your computer and press Enter. This command will show all of the partitions inside of a disc.
4. Type the select disk command followed the number assigned for the USB flash drive (e.g., select disk 4), and press Enter. This command will select the disc partition of your choice.
5. Enter the clean command and press Enter. This erases and formats the disc.
6. Type the convert GPT command and press Enter. This convert master boot record to new GPT.
7. Enter the create partition primary command and press Enter to complete the process.

Quickly create a macOS bootable USB on Windows

Now make bootable USB using the TransMac software (follow instructions that are given above). Now connect the USB and power on your Mac computer while holding the option key and then select the USB Flash media to run the installation.

Learn using USB on MAC (Apple support page)

Make External Hard Drive Bootable Mac

Learn more about making bootable USB.

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