Can one create a multi-partition USB Stick with Mavericks, Yosemite, Snow Leopard installers?
Does anyone have any experience creating a multi-partition USB Stick with bootable partitions for installing Mavericks, Yosemite and Snow Leopard?
I have a 32Gb stick I'd be perfectly willing to devote to this venture - if such a thing is even possible to create.
I have experience creating a singular Mavericks installer USB Stick - but does Option-booting a Mac allow for booting from multiple partitions?
Okay.. Apple have a perfectly workable website titled "Create a bootable installer for OS X" ( https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201372 )
Which tells you what to do via the Terminal, once you have successfully downloaded Install OS X El Capitan.app, Install OS X Yosemite.app and Install OS X Mavericks.app.
Their instructions are as follows:
EDIT: note, added macOS Sierra, which works with the same method - but is not listed on their website
macOS Sierra
sudo /Applications/Install\ macOS\ Sierra.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/MyVolume --applicationpath /Applications/Install\ macOS\ Sierra.app
OS X El Capitan
sudo /Applications/Install\ OS\ X\ El\ Capitan.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/MyVolume --applicationpath /Applications/Install\ OS\ X\ El\ Capitan.app
OS X Yosemite
sudo /Applications/Install\ OS\ X\ Yosemite.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/MyVolume --applicationpath /Applications/Install\ OS\ X\ Yosemite.app
OS X Mavericks
sudo /Applications/Install\ OS\ X\ Mavericks.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/MyVolume --applicationpath /Applications/Install\ OS\ X\ Mavericks.app
I was able to use these commands from the Terminal, onto a Disk Utility -made 5 partition USB stick. I verified it with option-down-during-boot (alt-down-during-boot) and both of them booted up fine.
I was unable to find an OS X Snow Leopard installer from my hard drive or elsewhere, so I'm considering this question answered.
Note: Mountain Lion installer app does not have "createinstallmedia" like Yosemite+Mavericks do, hence I didn't install that one on a USB stick - for that, one would have to use a secondary set of instructions for installing the installer to a USB stick via the usual way (Disk Utility, mounting, copying, copying some more..)
While I do not have experience with this particular method O/S X can easily boot from multi partitions on any media. It does to matter if it is a USB key, a Thunderbolt RAID array or whatever. Holding down the option key will give you all bootable partitions available to the Mac at boot.
Yes - it is possible. I have a USB drive with bootable OS X versions from 10.6 to 10.10.
- Use disk utility to create the partitions you need. Under
Partition
you can choose the number of desired partitions. Make sure you select theGUID Partition Table (GPT)
in Options. - Use a tool like DiskMaker X to create the OS X drives for you. For OS X 10.9 and 10.10 can also use the method described by @esaruoho.
- Press alt during boot and select the partition you want.
NB: Your Mac will only boot the partitions that it can actually handle. E.g. a recent Mac will not boot 10.7.