macOS Sierra is a fantastic update arriving from Apple to make us love our Macs even more. It has plenty of new features, and also has the same easy clean install and upgrade flow as did the previous OS.
- Install Mac Os From Usb
- New Hard Drive Os Install
- Install New Hard Drive Macbook
- External Hard Drive For Mac
LEARN MORE: How to Clean Install the macOS High Sierra?
Note, that getting an upgrade is the easiest way of installing the new macOS. It saves all your personal files, apps and user data, while a so-called clean install of Sierra will erase all data on the startup drive and replace it with a clean copy of OS. But, if you like an idea of giving your Mac a fresh start with a new macOS and nothing else, a clean install is the right option for you.
Also, in case you’ve noticed that with time your Mac is running slower, it has unusual startup or shutdown issues and crashes, a clean install may be a good way to get back the speed and fix the problem.
Today we’ll be installing MacOS Sierra 10.12.6 on An External Hard Drive or Solid State Drive and boot it on any Laptop or PC running on the latest 7th Gen Kaby Lake or even previous generation processors. Also, we don’t need a MacBook for this. So if you have a Windows Laptop, proceed with this tutorial. It’s like a portable OS disk which can be booted on any compatible Laptop or PC. Sep 20, 2016 If your non-startup drive has any other Mac OS, erase it before installing Sierra. If the target drive only has personal data on it, or is already empty, you can skip the erase process. To erase the non-startup drive, use a Mac's Drive Using Disk Utility (OS X El Capitan or later) After the non-startup drive is erased, you can start the install. Pick the drive you wish to use to start up the Mac. For more advice about installing macOS or Mac OS X read How to update the Mac operating system and How to install old versions of OS X on a Mac. Whichever method you choose, it will take anywhere from 15 to 30+ minutes to install OS X onto your external hard drive. Run Mac OS X From an 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.
First of all, make sure that your Mac is able to run MacOS Sierra.
Then, you should prepare your Mac for the installation:
- Download macOS Sierra Installer from the Mac App Store. Once the download completes, it will automatically launch. Quit macOS Sierra Installer app without performing the installation.
- Take a 16GB or larger USB flash drive to create a bootable Sierra installer. This flash drive is only needed for a clean install on your Mac’s startup drive. But if you plan to clean install on a non-startup drive (you have and extra HDD or SSD on your Mac), you don't need the USB.
- Backup your Mac to ensure your personal data is intact.
Clean Install macOS Sierra on Your Mac’s Startup Drive
If you're going to perform a clean install on the startup drive, you need to backup your data, create a bootable copy of the installer, and, finally, boot from the bootable installer. So, let us begin.
Step 1: Clean up your Mac
To make sure Sierra has no troubles installing and works fine after, you need to get rid of system junk on your Mac first. You could clean it up manually, but using a cleaning app like CleanMyMac X will save you hours on that. Junk removal with CleanMyMac takes only a few minutes. Download CleanMyMac for free, launch it, click Scan, and then Clean. Now you’ve got plenty of free space and your Mac is free from system trash.
![External External](/uploads/1/2/7/1/127123687/300680540.png)
Step 2: Back up your data
Note: A clean install of macOS Sierra on the startup drive completely erases all data on that drive: all your files and documents, including music, movies, pictures, and even apps.
So, If you skip this step, you wouldn’t be able to recover your data if something goes wrong.
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To backup your Mac:
- Open Time Machine.
- Click Select Disk.
- Choose where you wish to save your files (to the external drive or to the cloud storage).
- Click On to turn Time Machine on.
- Click on the “arrow clock” icon and select Back Up Now in the menu bar at the top of the screen.
Step 3: Clean Install macOS Sierra on your startup disk
1. Create a bootable flash drive with macOS Sierra.
First, make sure your USB flash drive is formatted and named as “Untitled”.
- To format a USB drive launch Disk Utility (Finder -> /Applications/Utilities/Disk Utility).
- Select your USB drive under External.
- Click the Erase tab at the top of the Disk Utility window. Select Mac OS Extended (Journaled) from the format list. Then, click the Erase button. When the process is complete, click Done, and close the Disk Utility window.
- If your drive is named something else, you need to rename it (Open Finder -> right click on the USB drive and choose Rename).
Now, your USB flash drive is ready.
- Launch Terminal (Finder Applications Utilities Terminal)
- Enter the following text into Terminal:
sudo /Applications/Install macOS Sierra.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/Untitled --applicationpath /Applications/Install macOS Sierra.app --nointeraction - Hit the Enter key.
- Terminal will ask you for an admin password (the one you use to log in). It won’t display characters when you type, so just do it. Hit Return. You’ll see that Terminal erases your drive. Then, Terminal will copy the installer file to your disk. This will take a few minutes. When the process is complete, the Terminal window will report 'Done.' You can quit Terminal and your bootable macOS Sierra installer USB drive is ready for use.
Also, you can follow the instructions from an Apple article on how to create bootable installer.
2. Plug in the bootable macOS Sierra installer USB drive to your Mac.
3. Restart your Mac while holding the Option key or Cmd+R. Make sure to keep it pressed!
4. When Mac restarts, you’ll see the macOS Startup Manager with a list of bootable devices that your Mac can start up from.
5. Use the arrow keys to choose your USB drive with macOS Sierra installer. Press Enter.
6. Select Disk Utility.
7. In the window, at the top of the left bar, select your Mac’s Main Drive (it looks like a MacintoshHD).
8. Select the Erase tab located next to the First Aid button at the top.
9. Near the center of the window, select the Format drop-down list and select Mac OS X Extended (Journaled) type.
10. Click Erase (Note: this will erase all your data from your main drive!) and give the drive some time to format.
11. When it’s done, close Disk Utility and select “Install macOS” from the menu.
12. Select your main drive and install the new macOS Sierra 10.12.
3. Restart your Mac while holding the Option key or Cmd+R. Make sure to keep it pressed!
4. When Mac restarts, you’ll see the macOS Startup Manager with a list of bootable devices that your Mac can start up from.
5. Use the arrow keys to choose your USB drive with macOS Sierra installer. Press Enter.
6. Select Disk Utility.
7. In the window, at the top of the left bar, select your Mac’s Main Drive (it looks like a MacintoshHD).
8. Select the Erase tab located next to the First Aid button at the top.
9. Near the center of the window, select the Format drop-down list and select Mac OS X Extended (Journaled) type.
10. Click Erase (Note: this will erase all your data from your main drive!) and give the drive some time to format.
11. When it’s done, close Disk Utility and select “Install macOS” from the menu.
12. Select your main drive and install the new macOS Sierra 10.12.
Follow these Sierra install instructions and enjoy your newly clean-installed macOS Sierra.
Clean Install on a Non-Startup Drive
This type of clean install doesn't require you to make a bootable copy of the macOS installer, since you can run the installer directly from your Mac’s startup drive. But you need to have another hard drive or volume that you can use for installing macOS.
New Hard Drive Os Install
So, this is the easiest way to clean install macOS 10.12. Simply use an extra drive or volume (it doesn’t have to necessarily be empty already, you just need to be fine with it being erased) and install Sierra there.
Step 1: Erase your non-startup drive
Install New Hard Drive Macbook
If your non-startup drive has any other Mac OS, erase it before installing Sierra. If the target drive only has personal data on it, or is already empty, you can skip the erase process.
To erase the non-startup drive, use a Mac's Drive Using Disk Utility (OS X El Capitan or later)
After the non-startup drive is erased, you can start the install process.
Step 2: Download the macOS Sierra Installer from the Mac App Store
When the macOS download completes, it will automatically launch the installer. Quit the macOS Sierra Installer app without performing the installation. You'll find the macOS Sierra Installer in the /Applications folder.
Step 3: Start the Installation of macOS Sierra on the Non-startup drive
- Launch the Installer from /Applications folder.
- Click Continue.
- Check the non-startup drive that you can install Sierra on (usually, the installer will display the default target for the installation of macOS Sierra as the startup drive (Macintosh HD). So, you should to click the Show All Disks button, and the installer will display a list of all attached volumes).
- Click the Install button.
- The macOS Sierra installer will display a progress bar. You'll be guided through the macOS Sierra setup process to create a user account, set up date and time, and other introductory stuff.
Enjoy your fresh, clean-installed macOS Sierra.
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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.
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 and connect the drive to your Mac.
![Install Mac Os Sierra From External Hard Drive Install Mac Os Sierra From External Hard Drive](/uploads/1/2/7/1/127123687/951391071.jpg)
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.
External Hard Drive For Mac
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!