A nice feature of late OS X versions isOS X Recovery . If you ever have system or drive take , OS X Recovery let you reboot your Mac into a limited recovery mode to stop or repair your hard private road , shop the entanglement for trouble-shoot assistant , restore your drive from a backup , or even reinstall OS X itself . ( See ourhands - on with Mountain Lion Recovery for all the details . )
OS X Recovery is a commodious feature that , in theory , means you no longer need an OS X Install magnetic disc or a bootable external hard parkway with the OS X installer . But there are still good rationality to have one . For example , if you want to install Mavericks ( OS X 10.9 ) on multiple Macs , a bootable installer drive is faster and more convenient than download or copying the entire OS X installer to each estimator .
But even for troubleshooting , a bootable installer drive has advantages over OS X Recovery . For freshman , OS X Recovery does n’t include the full Mavericks installer — it requires you to download over 5 GB of data point before you’re able to reinstall group O ecstasy 10.9 — whereas a bootable installer driving force stop all the necessary data , puddle installing much , much faster . And if you ’ve got a Mac that does n’t support OS XInternetRecovery — a variation of OS X Recovery that loads over the Internet and requires particular microcode — recovery mood may not even be available if your Mac ’s drive itself is having problems . ( OS X Internet Recovery is uncommitted on mid-2011 - or - recent macintosh , as well as some sometime Macs that have meet relevant microcode updates . ) A bootable installer drive , on the other hand , will always be there for you .
The problem for newer Macs
If you buy bone X 10.9 from the Mac App Store , creating a bootable Mavericks installer drivefrom the Mac App Store translation of Mavericks is relatively simple . However , if you have a Mac that debutedafterMavericks was released in October 2013 , your Mac shipped with Mavericks pre - installed , so you do n’t have an easily downloadable version of the installer — unless you happened to purchase Mavericks for another , aged Mac . This mean you ca n’t apply ourstandard tutorial .
( take down that Apple proffer adownloadable utility for creating an emergency osmium X Recovery drive , which Icovered when the Lion version was released . However , like the standard OS X Recovery feature article , this drive take you to download the full 5GB+ of OS X each time you desire to instal . So it ’s better to have the full installer on a bootable thrust . )
as luck would have it , it ’s possible to create a bootable Mavericks installer drive even if your only Mac is a manakin that ship with Mavericks — although doing so need a bit more work than if you had buy the Mac App Store rendering .
IMPORTANT : To reiterate , if you ’ve downloaded Mavericks from the Mac App Store ( for any other Mac you own ) , so you ’re able-bodied to download the Mac App Store reading of the Mavericks installer , you do n’t postulate to use the procedure in this article . you could instead useour standard instructions for create a bootable Mavericks installer drive . As long as you download the latest translation of the Mavericks installer from the Mac App Store — instructions are provided in that tutorial — you’ll have a bootable Mavericks installer that should work with every Mavericks - compatible Mac .
The solution for newer Macs
When you use OS X Internet Recovery to reinstall Mavericks , your Mac touch Apple ’s servers , identify itself , and request the appropriate Mavericks - installer datum . Apple ’s servers aver the Mac model and then , simulate it ’s a Mac compatible with OS X net Recovery , allow the rough 5 GB of installer information for download . Once that data has been download , OS X Recovery reboot your Mac , right away instal the atomic number 8 , and then delete the installer data .
The trick you want to perform is to disrupt that process — safely — so that you’re able to grab the installer information and keep it . Here are the step to take :
Now you ’ve got the latest Mavericks - installer data , and you ’re ready to use that data to create a bootable installer drive or disc . Here are the steps required :
Though you created your bootable installer drive from a particular Mac , you’re able to bring up almostanyMavericks - compatible model from this driving and instal Mavericks . you’re able to also utilize any of the Mavericks installer ’s recovery and restore characteristic from the installer ’s Utilities menu . I say “ almost ” because when Apple releases evennewerMac example , those models will do pre - install with anewerversion of Mavericks , so the installer drive you just create wo n’t immediately work with them . Until Apple updates the downloadable Mavericks installer to again be universal — something the company does silently , so you never know when it happens — you’ll need to create a raw Mavericks installer drive using one of those Macs .
