

You can also use the built-in recovery tools that come with the macOS installer to troubleshoot and fix different kinds of issues. This can save quite a bit of time, considering the most recent versions of macOS have an installer size of 12GB.


It would be good to verify that the second USB drive was assigned the same device name and check that the copy is identical to the original disk.Why Would You Need to Install macOS From a USB?Ĭreating a bootable USB drive and using it to reinstall macOS is a bit of a lengthier process compared to simply updating macOS from the Software Update section of the System Preferences, but it has its benefits.īut creating a bootable USB disk allows you to install or update macOS on multiple systems without having to download the installer on each Mac. Plug in the blank one, determine the path of the filename corresponding to it as explained above (by running diskutil list) and execute:Īgain, the input file ( if) is changed to the image file that we created in the last step and the output file ( of) is changed to the path of the file representing the USB disk. Unplug the flash drive when it's finished. of represents output file (image file) which would be created on your internal hard drive (specifically in the current directory). Here, if means input file, which is the path of the file representing the USB drive. Now run the following command in Terminal. In my case, the path for the file representing the external USB disk was /dev/disk2. The path would be of the form /dev/disk_x_ where _x_ would be an integer. Look for the entry corresponding to your USB drive (it would be labeled as (external, physical)) and note the path of the file representing it. This command will list all the connected internal and external disks. Plug in the flash drive you want to clone, open Terminal by searching in Spotlight ( Command + Space) or by going to Applications → Utilities folder. You can use the standard UNIX utility dd.
