Make Your Own OS X Yosemite USB Installer
My MacBook Pro is off to AppleCare tomorrow, but after I backed everything up to Time Machine, I made sure to make a bootable USB so I can have a fresh install without having to wait for Yosemite to download from the App Store.
In previous years I’ve used DiskMaker X (formerly known as Lion DiskMaker), which has been fairly solid and a great option for those wary of the odd Terminal command. I like the simplicity of using the command line where possible though.
- Get a USB stick at least 8GB in size that you don’t mind being wiped.
- Make sure that the partition format is ‘Mac OS Extended (Journaled).
- Click on ‘Apply’ to wipe the USB stick.
sudo /Applications/Install\ OS\ X\ Yosemite.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/**yosemite** --applicationpath /Applications/Install\ OS\ X\ Yosemite.app --nointeraction
Note: that I’ve put the name of my USB stick in bold so that you know you’ll need to change this to whatever you named your USB stick.
Sit back and wait while the data copies from the installer package to your USB stick. When it’s finished (and it may take some time), it will tell you it’s done.