Launch the Disk Utility application, which is located in the Utilities folder. Connect your USB flash drive to your Mac. Here’s what you’ll need to create a bootable Mac OS X Lion USB drive: A USB flash drive that is at least 8GB in size A copy of the Mac OS X Lion installation file Once you have everything you need, follow these steps to create your bootable Mac OS X Lion USB drive: 1. This will allow you to install Lion on any Mac that supports the use of bootable USB drives. If you’re interested in running Lion on your Mac, you can do so by creating a bootable USB flash drive. You can format the drive and then go back to the Recovery menu and install macOS Monterey.Apple’s latest operating system, Mac OS X Lion, was released on July 20, 2011.

If you want to erase your disk first, to do a clean install, quit the installer and run Disk Utility from the Recovery menu.

After selecting it, your system will boot off your USB drive and enter macOS Recovery with the macOS Monterey installer appearing on your screen. You should now see an option to select your USB drive as a startup disk. To boot an M1 or M2 Apple silicon Mac using a bootable USB disk, power on the system or restart it if it’s already on, and keep the Power button pressed down. Power on the system, or restart it if it’s already on, and immediately press and hold the Option key when it starts booting. Simply plug your created USB drive into an open USB port on your Mac. There are two different methods to boot your Mac from a bootable USB, depending on which processor your Mac has. You can use Time Machine to easily back up the data on your Mac. This almost always results in a Mac running faster after a clean install, since macOS has started over with a clean slate.īefore you reinstall macOS on your Mac, make sure you’ve backed up all your important data! This is crucial when you do a fresh installation, as it will wipe your hard drive. A clean installation allows you to get rid of junk apps and files that may have accumulated over time. These issues include when your Mac refuses to boot or when you need to recover system files that seem to be lost.Īnother benefit of using a bootable disk for a macOS installation is that you can perform a clean installation. You can also use the built-in recovery tools that come with the macOS installer to troubleshoot and fix different kinds of issues. This can save quite a bit of time, considering the most recent versions of macOS have an installer size of 12GB. Why Would You Need to Install macOS From a USB?Ĭreating a bootable USB drive and using it to reinstall macOS is a bit of a lengthier process compared to simply updating macOS from the Software Update section of the System Preferences, but it has its benefits.īut creating a bootable USB disk allows you to install or update macOS on multiple systems without having to download the installer on each Mac.

Lion os x bootable usb