It was 2009 when Apple last released a new operating system on physical media. Things have proceeded remarkably smoothly since version 10.7 switched to download-only installers, but there are still good reasons to want an old, reliable USB stick. For instance, if you find yourself doing multiple installs, a USB drive may be faster than multiple downloads (especially if you use a USB 3.0 drive). Or maybe you need a recovery disk for older Macs that don't support the Internet Recovery feature. Whatever the reason, you're in luck, because it's not hard to make one.
Note, that to install the Lion or Mountain Lion, your Mac needs to be running Snow Leopard so you can install the newer OS on top of it. How to get macOS El Capitan download. If you are wondering if you can run El Capitan on an older Mac, rejoice as it’s possible too. But before your Mac can run El Capitan it has to be updated to OS X 10.6.8. Apr 06, 2021 For an OS X El Capitan installation, the file gets saved as a disk image named 'InstallMacOSX.dmg'. To install, open the disk image and run the installer named 'InstallMacOSX.pkg'.
As usual, Apple no longer supply a bootable USB Flash Drive with latest OS X releases - including the new OS X 10.11 El Capitan. Using this tutorial you will. Install el capitan from usb drive Driver File Name: install-el-capitan-from-usb-drive.exe Driver Upload Date: 16 December 2020 Last Driver Version: 8.9.7 Driver File Size: 13,425 KB User Driver Rating: 4.7/5. Once you’ve done that, here’s how to install, reinstall, or upgrade to El Capitan, step by step: Boot from your Recovery HD partition by restarting your Mac while holding down the Command+R keys. The OS X Utilities window appears. Select Reinstall OS X, and click Continue. The OS X El Capitan splash screen appears.
As with last year, there are two ways to get it done. There's the super easy way with the graphical user interface and the only slightly less easy way that requires some light Terminal use. Here's what you need to get started.
- A Mac that you have administrator access to, duh. We've created El Capitan USB stick from both Yosemite and El Capitan, but your experience with other versions may vary.
- An 8GB or larger USB flash drive or an 8GB or larger partition on some other kind of external drive. For newer Macs, use a USB 3.0 drive—it makes things significantly faster.
- The OS X 10.11 El Capitan installer from the Mac App Store in your Applications folder. The installer will delete itself when you install the operating system, but it can be re-downloaded if necessary.
- If you want a GUI, you need the latest version of Diskmaker X app. Version 5 is the one with official El Capitan support.
- Diskmaker X is free to download, but the creator accepts donations if you want to support his efforts.
The easy way
Once you've obtained all of the necessary materials, connect the USB drive to your Mac and run the Diskmaker X app. The app will offer to make installers for OS X 10.9, 10.10, and 10.11, and it should run on OS X versions all the way back to 10.7—support for 10.6 was dropped in the most recent release.
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Diskmaker X has actually been around since the days of OS X 10.7 (it was previously known as Lion Diskmaker), and it's still the easiest GUI-based way to go without intimidating newbies. If you're comfortable with the command line, it's still possible to create a disk manually using a Terminal command, which we'll cover momentarily.
Select OS X 10.11 in Diskmaker X, and the app should automatically find the copy you've downloaded to your Applications folder. It will then ask you where you want to copy the files—click 'An 8GB USB thumb drive' if you have a single drive to use or 'Another kind of disk' to use a partition on a larger drive or some other kind of external drive. Choose your disk (or partition) from the list that appears, verify that you'd like to have the disk (or partition) erased, and then wait for the files to copy over. The process is outlined in screenshots above.
Linux Usb Download
The only slightly less-easy way
If you don't want to use Diskmaker X, Apple has actually included a terminal command that can create an install disk for you. Assuming that you have the OS X El Capitan installer in your Applications folder and you have a Mac OS X Extended (Journaled)-formatted USB drive named 'Untitled' mounted on the system, you can create an El Capitan install drive by typing the following command into the Terminal.
sudo /Applications/Install OS X El Capitan.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/Untitled --applicationpath /Applications/Install OS X El Capitan.app --nointeraction
The command will erase the disk and copy the install files over. Give it some time, and your volume will soon be loaded up with not just the OS X installer but also an external recovery partition that may come in handy if your hard drive dies and you're away from an Internet connection.
Whichever method you use, you should be able to boot from your new USB drive either by changing the default Startup Disk in System Preferences or by holding down the Option key at boot and selecting the drive. Once booted, you'll be able to install or upgrade El Capitan as you normally would.
Install OSX El Capitan on a PC (MBR)
Prerequisites
- A real Mac or Hackintosh
- A spare disk drive – at least 8Gb, preferably USB
- An 8Gb or larger USB stick
- The Install OSX El Capitan.app from the App Store
- A disk partition to install in
Install on spare disk drive
Connect your spare drive to your PC. Use the method described here to build the El Capitan install USB stick and install OSX using the GPT partition scheme on your spare disk drive. Check it boots up OK and works OK.
Copy to your MBR partition
Use the Disk Utility to either copy the El Capitan partition to your MBR partition, or create a disk image and restore it to your MBR partition. Install Clover on your new El Capitan partition using the MBR options.
Copy the kexts you used to build the USB stick to the new El Capitan partition in EFI>CLOVER>kexts>10.11. I needed FakeSMC.kext, NullCPUPowerManagement.kext and a ethernet driver AppleRTL8169Ethernet.kext. Disconnect the spare disk and reboot to check the El Capitan installation boots OK and works OK. If it worked on your GPT disk then it should be OK on MBR with the same drivers.
The problem with creating a GPT partitioned disk and installing on it is that you end up with a bios boot menu item ‘Mac OSX’ which you can’t delete, even using the Clover EFI shell or the linux utility efibootmgr. I’ve got two flavours of linux and efibootmgr refuses to work on both of them. It may be possible to get around this by installing on a USB drive.
I have since found you need to run the Clover EFI shell while doing a UEFI boot to get access to the bios boot menu items.
Later releases
I couldn’t get this to work on Sierra and High Sierra because the installer automagically creates a recovery partition which doesn’t get transferred. So I have converted to UEFI, which works fine using the USB stick method.