To create a bootable El Capitan installer drive, you need the El Capitan installer from the Mac App Store and a Mac-formatted drive that’s big enough to hold the installer and all its data. I tested the USB on my 2011 iMac and can view it on that Startup Manager. However on the MBP 2009 running EL Capitan I am not given the option to boot from. Can anyone help? P.S I upgraded the HDD to a SSD and cloned an old version of my El Capitan off my Time Machine Backup I had. Finally, after about 25 more minutes, OS X El Capitan should be successfully installed on the target drive. Boot into El Capitan via the USB Device. After the second reboot, boot from the USB device once again, but this time, select Boot OS X from El Capitan, and select verbose mode. Press Enter and cross your fingers again. If all goes well.
DiskMaker X (formerly Lion DiskMaker) is an application built with AppleScript that you can use with many versions of OS X to build a bootable drive from OS X installer program (the one you download from the App Store). As soon as you launch the application, it tries to find the OS X Install program with Spotlight. Then, it proposes to build a bootable install disk and make it look as nice as possible. It’s the easiest way to build an OS X Installer in a few clicks ! Then you can use the Install drive to fully re-install the OS on a freshly formated drive, or install it on your many Macs without re-downloading the full installer.
Jump over the break to learn how to use DiskMaker X…
1. Get an an empty flash drive with at least 8GB of storage
Make El Capitan Install Usb
2. Download OS X El Capitan
3. Download DiskMaker X
4. Double-click on the .dmg file to open it and drag-and-drop the DiskMaker X app into the Applications folder
5. Now load DIskMaker X. When you load the app, it will ask you which version of OS X do you want to make a boot disk of. You can choose Mavericks, Yosemite and of course, El Capitan. We’ll choose El Capitan
6. Now, the app will search for a copy of OS X El Capitan. Once it found your El Capitan copy, it will ask you if you want to use the copy that it found or you want to use another copy. If you downloaded it from the app store ( step 2 ), choose ‘Use this copy’
7. Now the app will ask you about your thumb drive, and it will tell you that will be completely erased before copying OS X El Capitan onto it…
8. Now the app will format your flash drive and ask you for your admin password. Once you enter your admin password, DiskMaker X will start copying the necessary El Capitan files onto your flash drive.
Create El Capitan Usb Installer
NOTE: this process will take a while. Be patient….
El Capitan Boot Usb Maker
9. When you’re done, the app will tell you that the boot disk is ready, you’ll see that your flash drive has been renamed as OS X 10.11 Install Disk and it will be opened. Now all you have to do is restart your Mac and and after you here the chime sound, press the Option ( Alt ) key until you see the option to choose the flash drive to boot from.