By default, your Mac starts up from its built-in hard disk, but a startup disk can be any storage device that contains an operating system compatible with your Mac. For example, if you install macOS or Microsoft Windows on an internal or external drive, your Mac can recognize that drive as a startup disk. You can then follow the steps in this.

While, sometimes it can be very useful to create a disk image of your Mac OS X hard drive to store on an external drive. One example would be if you were intending to.

Creating a backup disk image with Disk Utility allows you to take an exact snapshot of your present hard drive, and then restore it to the new drive once it is fitted. In this tutorial we’ll take you through the necessary steps to create a backup of your Mac with Disk Utility: 1.) First, ensure you have a external USB 2.0 or Firewire hard drive connected to your Mac, and make sure it has enough spare disk space to store an image of your present hard drive: 2.) Go to Applications, then Utilities and double-click on Disk Utility.

The application will open, presenting you with this interface: 3.) Close any other open applications, and then select your Mac’s internal hard drive from the left-hand pane of Disk Utility: 4.) Click on File in the toolbar, then select New then Disk Image from [your hard drive]: 5.) Name your Mac backup and then select your external drive as the destination in the Where drop-down menu: 6.) You can opt to change the Image Format settings: or the Encryption settings: But for general use we would recommend leaving them as the defaults of “compressed” image format and no encryption. Animate slides in powerpoint. 7.) Click Save to begin the process of creating the disk image on your external hard drive.

Disk Utility may require some considerable time to create the backup of your Mac depending on how much stored data your internal drive holds. Disk Utility will notify you when the process is finished. You will now have a complete copy of your Mac’s hard drive from which you can restore in the event of an emergency reformat or hard drive replacement.

Apple uses its App Store to distribute its software, like new Mac operating systems. It’s convenient, but sometimes it can take a while for a download to finish.

And if you have multiple Macs, it’s inefficient to download the new OS to each and every Mac. That’s why I like to make a bootable external drive for the sole purpose of installing the Mac operating system. When I need to tend to a bunch of Macs, it’s much faster to use a bootable drive instead of going to each Mac, launching the App Store, searching for the operating system, downloading it (after entering my Apple ID), and then running the installer. You can create a bootable USB flash drive with the macOS Sierra installer that’s now available. The installer software will take up nearly 5GB of storage space.

Here’s how to create a bootable macOS Sierra installer drive. Macworld also has bootable-install-drive instructions for: • • • • • • Download the macOS Sierra installer Launch the App Store app, then look for macOS Sierra in the store.

(.) Click on the Download button, and your Mac will download the installer to your Applications folder. If it automatically launches after download, quit the installer. Keep the installer in the Applications folder.

If you’ve already upgraded your Mac to Sierra, the installer is removed from the Applications folder. You can download it again if you go to Purchased in the App Store. Look for macOS Sierra in the list of apps that you’ve bought, and click on the Download button.

If it automatically launches after download, quit the installer. Get an external drive You can use a USB flash drive or a hard drive with room for the installer software.

I’ve used different drives with success, including a VisionTek 120GB USB 3.0 Pocket Solid State Drive ($83 on ) and an old 8GB Iomega Micro Mini Hard Drive. Don’t worry if the drive isn’t formatted for the Mac. The drive will be reformatted automatically as part of the process. Change the name of your drive to Untitled; you need to do this for the steps below. The quick and easy way The process detailed below involves the Terminal. If your really don’t want to use Terminal, there are a couple of free apps you can use. • is a straightforward way to create a boot disk.