How to make OS X Mavericks Bootable USB flash drive

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The command from the blog post doesn't work because -- characters were converted to em-dashes.

First use Disk Utility to create a partition with 8 GB of space:

Then run this command, where Untitled is the name of the partition:

sudo /Applications/Install\ OS\ X\ Mavericks.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/Untitled --applicationpath /Applications/Install\ OS\ X\ Mavericks.app --nointeraction

It should print output like this:

Copying installer files to disk...
Copy complete.
Making disk bootable...
Copying boot files...
Copy complete.
Done.

After that, you should be able to start up from the partition by holding option on startup.

You don't necessarily need an external installation disk at all though. You can reinstall OS X from the recovery partition. If your Mac supports Internet Recovery mode, it can also download a disk image for the recovery system from Apple's servers even if the internal drive is empty. If you want to do a clean reinstall, you can erase and reinstall 10.8 or 10.7 from the recovery partition and then upgrade to 10.9.

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James1
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Updated on September 18, 2022

Comments

  • James1
    James1 almost 2 years

    i'm trying to make a bootable OS X Mavericks USB flash drive but cannot run the script.

    Visit this link:

    http://www.redmondpie.com/how-to-make-os-x-mavericks-bootable-usb-flash-drive-for-a-clean-install/

    I followed the script and it fails, after you input the script, enter password then I got a message saying:

    You must specify both the volume and install application path.

    Now i don't know what to do.

    Please help guys!

  • James1
    James1 over 10 years
    Thank you so much. I was wondering why nobody complaint about the script in the Redmondpie link haha. I guess they knew it, only me didn't.