Jesus Vigo goes over the steps to create a bootable USB to install OS X 10.9 (aka Mavericks). In April, I wrote an article on TechRepublic about how to create a bootable USB to install OS X.

1. How To Make A Bootable Disk With Installesd.dmg Key
2. How To Make A Bootable Disk With Installesd.dmg Windows 10
3. Make A Bootable Vista Disk

May 18, 2018  Now copy this InstallESD.DMG as you need it in TransMac to Create macOS High Sierra Bootable USB Installer on Windows 10. Ok, so lets continue with TransMac Restore Disk Image to Drive. On this screen, select the InstallESD.DMG file and click OK. Click Yes, when TransMac Gives you the Overwrite warning. InstallESD.dmg contains another disk image, BaseSystem.dmg, which is a bootable installer disk. But writing it directly to the USB drive does not work, because that would create a partition with almost no free space and still lacking some important files.

This guide deals with 3 ways of making a boot disk from OSX 10.9 Mavericks the first one is the fastest and is done via the Terminal from a new command already in OSX Mavericks called createinstallmedia , the other 2 are older ways when Mavericks was in development and are done with a mixture of finder using Disk Utility and command line.

Dec 22, 2013  For some reason, Apple decided that the InstallESD.dmg that comes with the Mavericks Install as downloaded from the App Store shouldnt be a bootable DVD image anymore. In earlier times, all you needed to do was to convert that InstallESD.dmg into. I now need to create a bootable USB drive from the DMG file but I need to be Stack Exchange Network Stack Exchange network consists of 175 Q&A communities including Stack Overflow, the largest, most trusted online community for developers to learn, share their knowledge, and build their careers. To create a bootable USB flash drive. Insert a USB flash drive into a running computer. Open a Command Prompt window as an administrator. Type diskpart. In the new command line window that opens, to determine the USB flash drive number or drive letter, at the command prompt, type list disk.

Quickest Way

Download Mac OSX 10.9Mavericks but don’t install.

Attach your USB stick/drive.

Launch the Terminal from /Applications/Utilities and enter the command below and then your password when prompted, be sure to change the ‘Untitled‘ name in the below command to your external disk name:

Let it do its thing and there you have it, one bootable Mac OSX 9 drive.

This really is a super simple way – however if using the Terminal fills you with fear and dread, there are some GUI apps that can get the job done namely DiskMakerX and a new imaging tool that can clone a new disk very quickly – AutoDMG.

Alternative Ways of building a Bootable Mavericks OSX Disk.

To make a boot disk of OSX 10.9 Mavericks, first of all get the app or download via the App store, if downloaded it will file in the folder Applications.

Control / Left click Options, Show in Finder to get to the app, don’t install at this stage.

Located in the Applications Folder

Finding the InstallESD.dmg

To find the actual InstallESD.dmg file, control/left click the ‘Install OS X Mavericks’ app and choose show contents – then navigate to Shared Support folder.

Control/Right click to show contents

Navigate to Shared Support folder to see the InstallESD.dmg file

Mount InstallESD.dmg

Double click to mount the image.

Make Invisible Files Visible

We need to see the BaseSystem.dmg inside the InstallESD.dmg

Crank open Terminal and run:

This will show all invisible files have a look inside the mounted InstallESD.dmg

Mount an External Disk

Attach a USB/external drive – this guide uses the external drive name calledBootDisk, you need to make sure the format is correct, it needs to be Mac OSX Extended Journaled – it its not you can format that in Disk Utility.

Launch Disk Utility

How To Make A Bootable Disk With Installesd.dmg Key

Launch Disk Utility as found in Applications/Utilities and go to the Restore tab.

Drag BaseSystem.dmg to the Source field and your external disk to the Destination and click Restore.

This will mount your new OSX 10.9 external disk and name it OSX Base System – but we need to add the packages.

Fix the Packages

Couple of things to fix in the newly created boot disk, remove the Packagealias at System/Installation/ folder

Now from the previously mounted InstallESD.dmg copy over the Packages folder to the same location where we just removed the alias above.

People often face challenges like: Cannot Open DMG File on Windows How to Mount DMG Files in WindowsAs mentioned above, DMG files are the disk image files for MAC OS X. These DMG files can be easily opened in MAC but the main challenge is to open.dmg in Windows. DMG file format is used to store compressed software installers so as to avoid the usage of physical disc. These installation files cannot be used in Windows. How do i open a dmg file in windows 8. DMG files can be said as a digital reconstruction of a physical disc.

Will take a while as it holds all the install packages.

Job done now you can boot from the OSX 10.9 disk.

Make the Visible back to Invisible

If you want all to return back to normal and hide the system files run a couple more commands in the Terminal

How to create the OSX 10.9 Mavericks Bootable Drive just via Terminal

Just for the crazy ones……after Mavericks is downloaded….and again this assumes you external disk is named BootDisk

How To Make A Bootable Disk With Installesd.dmg Windows 10

Mount the InstallESD.dmg buried deep in the app

Make A Bootable Vista Disk

Swap to the newly mounted image

This puts you back in the Finder in front of the newly mounted InstallESD.dmg, go back to Terminal and clone the BaseSystem.dmg to the remote USB drive

This will change ‘BootDisk‘ to ‘OS X Base System‘

Remove the existing Packages alias link from the newly restored image

Copy the full OSX Mavericks Packages over to the new image….takes a while

And there it is! – to eject the new bootable USB OSX Mavericks 10.9 disk ‘cd’ to home and eject

Now you can boot up from your newly bootable disk and either Install OSX10.9 on another device or use the Terminal/Disk Utility or Firmware Password Utilities on another device.