Install Mac Os X 10.8 On External Hard Drive
- Mac Os On Usb Drive
- External Hard Drive Mac To Windows
- Install Mac Os X 10.8 On External Hard Drive Windows 10
Mar 24, 2017 3. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Optionally, click on. The Security button and set the Zero Data option to one-pass. The Erase button and wait until the process has completed. Quit DU and return to the main menu. Reinstall OS X: Select Reinstall OS X and click on the Install. Jul 18, 2013 After purchasing a new hard drive or managing a corrupt one on an older Mac, you can install your current version of OS X even though you might not have a working Recovery option (on the drive. It should only take a minute or two for the drive to be erased and reformatted. Now your drive is ready for OS X. Install OS X. There are two ways you can install OS X on to your external hard disk: by reinstalling OS X from the OS X Utilities repair screen or by downloading OS X. Backup files Using External Hard Drive If you are running short on time, then you can also take a manual backup using an external hard disk as well. Just connect the hard disk to your Mac and make sure that you are using a hard drive that is compatible with your macOS. Apple released the new Mac OS X 10.10 Yosemite in the Mac App Store for everyone to download and install for free on October 16th, 2014, but downloading a 5+ GB file for each of your computers will take some serious time. The best thing to do is download it once and create a bootable install USB drive from the file for all of your Macs.
Looking for a way to install and run OS X on an external hard drive? This can be useful for a couple of different reasons. Firstly, it allows you to run another copy of OS X without needing any additional Mac computer.
Also, since you can run a full copy of OS X on the external drive, it can be used for troubleshooting purposes on other Macs or it can be as a kind of virtual OS X. I’ve already written about how you can install OS X in VMware Fusion, but that takes up space on your Mac. Using an external drive, you can save space on your Mac, though it might be a bit slower if you are using USB 2.0.
In this article, I’ll walk you through the requirements and steps to install OS X onto an external hard drive.
Format External Hard Disk
The first thing you’re going to need to do is format the external hard drive properly. The file format has to be Mac OS X Journaled and you have to use the GUID partition map. To do this, open Disk Utility and connect the drive to your Mac.
Under External in the left hand menu, click on your external hard drive and then click on the Erase button. Make sure you backup any data before you erase the drive. When you click Erase, a dialog will pop up where you can configure some options.
Give your drive a name, choose OS X Extended (Journaled) for Format and GUID Partition Map for Scheme. It should only take a minute or two for the drive to be erased and reformatted. Now your drive is ready for OS X.
Install OS X
There are two ways you can install OS X on to your external hard disk: by reinstalling OS X from the OS X Utilities repair screen or by downloading OS X from the App Store and running the installer. I’ll show you both methods in case one isn’t working for you.
The easiest way is to download OS X from the App Store. Once you open the App Store, you’ll see a link on the right for the latest version of OS X (El Capitan as of this writing).
Go ahead and click the Download button to start downloading the installer. Note that if you already have that version of OS X installed, you’ll see a popup message appear asking if you still want to continue or not. Just click Continue.
Once it has been downloaded, just double-click the installer, which will be located in the Applications folder.
Keep clicking past the license agreement, etc., until you get to the screen that asks you which disk to install OS X on. By default, it is set to MacBook.
Click on the Show All Disks button and you’ll see an icon for the different disks and partitions on the Mac. I named my external hard drive OS X and that shows up in the middle.
You can also tell it’s an external hard disk because it uses the icon with the orange hard drive. Click Continue and then follow the instructions to complete the installation. Note that your computer may restart during the install and you don’t have to do anything. OS X will automatically continue installing onto the external hard drive rather than booting up to your internal version of OS X.
At the end of this article, I’ll show you how to boot up to the external hard drive, so skip down if you ended up using the App Store method. Note that by default, the Mac will start booting up directly to the external hard drive until you change it.
The second method to install OS X is to restart the Mac and press and hold the COMMAND + R keys. This will load up OS X Recovery.
Mac Os On Usb Drive
The OS X Utilities screen will appear and here you want to click on Reinstall OS X. Again, you’ll go through some basic screens, but when you get to the hard disk screen, click on Show All Disks again.
Using this method, you’ll have to login using your Apple ID and password so that the entire OS X installer can be downloaded off of Apple’s servers. Whichever method you choose, it will take anywhere from 15 to 30+ minutes to install OS X onto your external hard drive.
While OS X is installing, your computer will restart a couple of times. Note that when it finally boots into OS X, that is the version running off your external drive. To switch back and forth between the internal and external drive, you have to restart your computer and hold down the OPTION key.
When you do that, you should see at least four icons. In my case, I have five because I have Windows installed using Boot Camp. Anyway, the grey MacBook and Recovery 10.11.2 icons are for my internal OS X and the orange OS X and Recovery 10.11.3 are for the version installed on my external drive.
Use the arrow keys to select which drive to boot from and then simply press Enter. If you have a newer Mac and a USB drive that supports USB 3.0, everything should run fairly fast. Overall, it’s a fairly straight-forward process and took me less than an hour to get everything working. If you have any questions, feel free to comment. Enjoy!
In theory, you should have to install Mountain Lion only once, or never if your Mac came with Mountain Lion preinstalled. And in a perfect world, that would be the case. But you might find occasions when you have to install/reinstall it, such as
External Hard Drive Mac To Windows
If you get a Mac that didn’t come with OS X Mountain Lion preinstalled
If you have a catastrophic hard-drive crash that requires you to initialize (format) or replace your boot drive
If you buy an external hard drive and want it to be capable of being your Mac’s startup disk (that is, a bootable disk)
If you replace your internal hard drive with a larger, faster, or solid state drive
If any essential OS X files become damaged or corrupted, or are deleted or renamed
The following instructions do double duty: They’re what you do to install OS X for the first time on a Mac, and they’re also what you do if something really bad happens to the copy of OS X that you boot your Mac from. The instructions offered here describe both the process for installing and the process for reinstalling OS X.
Here’s how to install (or reinstall) OS X, step by step:
Install Mac Os X 10.8 On External Hard Drive Windows 10
Boot from your Recovery HD partition by restarting your Mac while holding down the cmd+R keys.
The OS X Utilities window appears. Select Reinstall OS X, and click Continue. The OS X Mountain Lion splash screen appears. Click Continue.
A sheet appears informing you that your computer’s eligibility needs to be verified by Apple. Click Continue to begin the process of installing or reinstalling OS X.
If you’re not connected to the Internet, you’ll be asked to choose a Wi-Fi network from the AirPort menu in the top-right corner.
The Mountain Lion software license agreement screen appears. Read it and click Agree.
A sheet drops down, asking whether you agree to the terms of the license agreement. Yes, you did just click Agree; this time you’re being asked to confirm that you indeed clicked the Agree button.
If you don’t click Agree you can’t go any farther, so I advise you to click Agree now.
Choose the disk on which you want to reinstall OS X by clicking its icon once in the pane where you select a disk.
If only one suitable disk is available you won’t have to choose; it will be selected for you automatically.
Click the Install button.
A sheet asks for your Apple ID and password. Type them in the appropriate fields; click Sign In, and your Mountain Lion installation (or reinstallation) begins.
The operating system takes 30 to 60 minutes to install, so now might be a good time to take a coffee break. When the install is finished, your Mac restarts itself. If you were reinstalling OS X on a hard disk that it had been installed on previously, you’re done.
Your Mac will reboot and you can begin using your new, freshly installed (and ideally trouble-free) copy of OS X Mountain Lion.
If you’re installing Mountain Lion on a hard disk for the first time, however, you still have one last step to complete. After your Mac reboots, the Setup Assistant window appears. You need to work your way through the Setup Assistant’s screens.