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.
Sep 06, 2019 In this article, we’ve given detailed instructions for each method. So, it doesn’t matter if you want a clean slate on a second-hand MacBook or if you replaced the drive in your age-old machine, we’ve got you covered.Simply follow the instructions below to install the latest compatible version of macOS or OS X on your new hard drive. Jun 01, 2020 The version of macOS offered by macOS Recovery might vary in some cases: If macOS Sierra 10.12.4 or later has never been installed on this Mac, Option-Command-R installs the macOS that came with your Mac, or the closest version still available. And Shift-Option-Command-R isn't available. If you erased your entire disk instead of just the startup volume on that disk, macOS Recovery might.
To follow the steps in this article, you'll need an empty 16GB or larger USB thumb drive (USB-C or USB-A, depending on your Mac) and an hour or two of downtime while the installation procedure.
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 Xerox phaser 6100 driver mac os x download. 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.
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!
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Behold, the day has come! Apple’s macOS 10.14 Mojave is out and available as a free download now
Let's start with a quick overview of what you get in the new system and why it's worth installing:
Clean install is a bit different from a regular upgrade. You’d usually simply roll the new macOS right over your old one. You get a new desktop wallpaper and all your applications and files right where you left them. Including the ones you don’t want anymore, and including some system junk left from the previous OS.
Which is why if you feel like there’s a need for a purge — in the best meaning of this word — among your files and system leftovers, it makes more sense to run an clean install. The usual reasons are: system jut has started to affect your Mac’s performance, you need to make sure your old data is cleared, you’re selling a Mac or passing it to a new owner.
Or maybe (and we get you) you just want that freshly-bought Mac experience again.
If you did a clean install of macOS High Sierra last year, here's some good news: it's pretty much the same. If you haven't, another good news: we'll take you through it step by step.
How to prepare your Mac for the clean install
Before you do anything, check that your Mac is able to run Apple's new operating system. If you were able to run the previous macOS High Sierra with no visible issues, you're probably fine. But just in case, double-check. We'll also give you main requirements below.
To complete the clean install procedure, you'll need:
Make sure your Mac is ready to Mojave
First of all, check that your Mac is compatible with new macOS. Here's a list of Macs that can run the Mojave:
You'll need at least 4 GB of free space on drive. Not too much but keep that in mind before you start.
Choose the right way to clean install macOS 10.14
There are a few ways to correctly run a clean install and they mainly depend on how your Mac hard drives are structured. Now, if your Mac has one single drive, not broken into parts, and it is the drive where every file you own is stationed, as well as your system, they your only choice is to clean install on the startup drive.
Keep in mind: if you proceed to do it on your startup drive, all your files and data will be permanently removed. To keep them safe, you’ll need a backup, we’ll tell you how to do it, no worried.
If your hard drive is partitioned (broken into volumes), or you have another drive, you can clean installing on a non-startup drive. This way your files are preserved, since it’s a more lenient way of OS upgrade. Only the system gets cleared and reinstalled with a new one, while the rest of the drive is left intact.
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If you don’t know which one you have, go with the first option, startup drive.
How to clean install macOS Mojave on a startup disk drive
Make sure you’ve got everything ready to clean install Mojave and let’s get down to business. It’s going to be easy because we’ll take you step by step through the safest way to do it.
We’re going to mention a few applications you’ll need during the process. Worry not, you won’t need to look them up on the web, and all of the apps are available on Setapp. It’s a subscription collection of Mac apps, you can use any app in there once you download it on your Mac. It has a weekly free trial, so go ahead and sign up.
Install Mac Os On Blank Hard Drive
Since clean installation involves wiping your Mac’s main drive, it’s vital that you back it up immediately before you start. And since some of those files are junk, backing them up would be, well, unadvisable. So it’s usually a good idea to remove extra files before the backup with a Mac cleaner, like CleanMyMac. Run it and give your High Sierra a polish before clean installing Mojave.
1: Clean up your Mac
Time to remove every junk-looking thing you can find — old movies and media files, apps you never use, cache and system trash, duplicate files that you accidentally copied a few times. All the hard-drive-space-eaters, all have to go.
This might sound like a lot of work but it’s actually about 10 minutes when you have the right software. Open CleanMyMac
and run a full scan. This will remove system junk, old caches, and random unused files. To get rid of apps use the Uninstaller tab, and for the big media files run the Large & Old Files search.
You've probably enjoyed the ability to store images in the cloud and keep all of them despite limited space, which means you've got a lot to clean among your photos. To spot and erase those repeating images, try Gemini app. It's made to find duplicate and similar files or folders on your hard drive, so you can delete them and retrieve precious storage space.
2: Backup your data
When all of the extra files are gone and all you’ve got left on drive is what you actually need, time to back it all up. Use Get Backup Pro for the job. It’s better than Apple’s native Time Machine. Also, move your photos and document into the cloud (iCloud, Dropbox, whatever your choice is) or to an external drive, like a USB stick.
And, create a bootable clone, in case of tech issues during the upgrade. This way you’ll be able to go back to where you started easily. Plus, a cloned drive lets you quickly copy files to your new system.
Another tip: if you have any specifically customized apps that took time to set right, make screenshots of app settings. And keep a record of license codes for the apps you’ve bought to restore them when reinstalled.
By the way, if you get Setapp subscription we mentioned before — the problem with license codes will become a thing of the past. All the apps inside are fully active and packed in one suite. No separate purchases, paid upgrades, and so on.
3: Create a bootable macOS Mojave installer
Notice: Apple usually gets protective over previous versions and removes the installer once the next macOS is out. Which is why you might want to grab the High Sierra installer before its gone from the app store (if the link is still active, you're lucky).
Why you might need it: in case the new macOS Mojave refuses to behave on your Mac or you just don't like it, or any other problem occurs and you'll need to downgrade and clean install High Sierra back to your Mac, that's when the installer comes in handy. It's a corner case but better safe than sorry, right? Anyways, now that you have your High Sierra backup plan, you can process.
4: Install Mojave 10.14 on your startup disk drive
Make sure you backup your Mac to keep your important files, before taking next step, that erase your Mac’s Startup drive.
Install Mac Os On Empty Hard Drive Download
To erase your Mac’s main drive:
When the macOS Utilities screen appears, follow these steps:
After the reboot, your Mac will require setting up like a new one. Imagine you just bought it and proceed to fill in all the gaps — WiFi, iCloud with Apple ID, Dropbox, accounts, passwords. Could take a while but remember, it was worth it.
Once the initial process is done, you can start stocking up on software. To reinstall the apps from Setapp, go to setapp.com to get Setapp installer or download Setapp here.
It makes sense to only install those applications you need right now. Other apps can be downloaded later. You don’t need too much clutter on your fresh system.
How to clean install macOS Mojave on a non-startup drive
Just as last year when we were doing the clean instal of High Sierra, you don’t need a backup for this option, it’s safer and faster than the previous way but only available to you if you have an extra drive or your drive is broken down into volumes.
Install Mac Os On Empty Hard Drive Windows 10
Here’s how to instal your new macOS on the non-startup disk.
1. Erase your non-startup disk drive
Before you install the new OS on it, you need to erase all data on the drive you’ve chosen for it.
To completely remove data with Disk Utility choose the volume you’d like to clean up and click Erase.
If you still need some info from that drive, you can use an app like Chronosync Express to sync it with another drive and keep the files.
2. Download the macOS Mojave Installer from the Mac App Store
To download the macOS Mojave installer, go to the Mac App Store > Updates tab and choose Mojave installer (Here is a direct link.) When it's ready, it's going to launch automatically. You will need to quit it at this point, we're not running it this way.
You don’t need to create a specific bootable drive, use the installer you've just downloaded and install the new macOS 10.14 onto the other drive you have.
Install Mac Os On Empty Hard Drive Windows 73. Install macOS Mojave to your non-startup drive drive
Find the Mojave installer in your Applications folder and launch it. You’ll be offered to choose your target drive for the installation, change it from startup to the one you need. To do it, click Show All Disks and find the needed volume on the list. Finish the installation by simply following the instructions. Your OS is now ready, time to set it up. You’ll have to undergo the same process as if the Mac was totally new.
Mac Os Hard Drive Icon
When you have the system ready, you can start filling it with applications. If you don’t enjoy looking for every app’s licence code, get Setapp. There are 120+ pro apps of high quality, all packed in one suite. Saves time and money and covers hundreds of daily Mac tasks.
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