How to make your own bootable OS X 10.10 Yosemite USB install drive

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.

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, duh. We've created Yosemite USB from both Mavericks and Yosemite, 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 10.10 Yosemite 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—we wrote this article based on version 4 beta 2, but if a "final" version is released alongside Yosemite we'll update the article. This app is free to download, but the creator accepts donations if you want to support his efforts.
• An administrator account on the Mac you're using to create the disk.

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 10.8, 10.9, and 10.10, but we're only interested in Yosemite today.

Diskmaker X has actually been around since the days of OS X 10.7 (it was previously known as Lion Diskmaker), but it's more important now because Apple has made alterations to the installer that prevent easy USB drive creation using the built-in Disk Utility app. It's still possible to create a disk manually using a Terminal command (which we'll go into momentarily), but Diskmaker X presents an easy GUI-based way to do it that is less intimidating to most people.

Select OS X 10.10 in Diskmaker X, and the app should automatically find the copy you've downloaded to your Applications folder. If it doesn't detect the installer (or if you click "Use another copy"), you can navigate to the specific installer you want to use. 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 below.

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 Yosemite 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 a Yosemite install drive by typing the following command into the Terminal.

sudo /Applications/Install\ OS\ X\ Yosemite.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/Untitled --applicationpath /Applications/Install\ OS\ X\ Yosemite.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 Yosemite as you normally would.