How to Create a Bootable USB Drive to Install OS X Mavericks

WWDC 2013 Apple showed their new operating system for the Mac. New Mac OS X named out of Cat family which is called  “Mavericks”.  Apple released OSX Mavericks (10.9) Developer Preview 1 for all developers. New OSX comes with great features which we are longing for these days. Let me point out few. Tabs in Finder, Password Chain for Browsers, Better notifications and more. Today we going to show how to create Bootable USB Drive to Install OS X Mavericks.

First You have to download the OS X Mavericks Dev Preview 1 from Apple Developer Site or you can download from various source too. Then take USB Flash drive Minimum of 8GB Capacity. This tutorial is not easy, though we explain each steps clearly. So follow carefully to make it work.

Before Beginning the installation make sure your device is supports or not. OS X Mavericks requirement are (May be changed in final release)

• MacBook Air (Late 2008 or later)
• iMac (Mid-2007 or later)
• Xserve (Early 2009)
• MacBook (13-inch Aluminum, Late 2008), (13-inch, Early 2009 or later)
• MacBook Pro (13-inch, Mid-2009 or later), (15-inch, Mid/Late 2007 or later), (17-inch, Late 2007 or later)
• Mac Pro (Early 2008 or later)
• Mac Mini (Early 2009 or later)

Preparing USB drive for Bootable OS X Mavericks

• Plug in the USB drive to the Mac and Launch Disk Utility

• Now Select the USB drive from the left side menu and Select Partition tab and choose “1 Partition“. Then Click Options button.
• Select GUID Partition Table in the Popup box and Click OK and Click Apply to the Disk Utility.

Before Mounting the “OS X 10.9 Mavericks Developer Preview 1.dmg” file or Opening Installer. You have to enable the feature to show hidden files. Lets see how to do that.

• Launch Terminal and type the Following command

defaults write com.apple.Finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE;\killall Finder;\say Files Revealed

Note: Your Finder will be restarted and it will be show the hidden files in your Mac. ( You can use the same command instead of TRUE, type FALSE to hide the hidden files after preparing the Bootable drive)

• If you already have DMG File, Just Mount Directly or You have downloaded App file of the Installer go to Applications folder to locate “Install OS X 10.9 Developer Preview.app” file.
• Right Click and select “Show Package Contents” and Navigate to /Contents/SharedSupport.
• You can find InstallESD.dmg file. Mount the DMG file.
• Open the mounted “OS X Install ESD“, you can find “BaseSystem.dmg“, “BaseSystem.chunklist” Files and “Packages” Folder. (If you cant able to see “BaseSystem.dmg” Kindly follow the above terminal command to reveal the hidden files.)

• Now Mount the “BaseSystem.dmg” file.

• Now again open Disk Utility and select BaseSystem.dmg from the left sidebar. Click Restore Tab to open Restore options.
• Set Source to “BaseSystem.dmg” and Drag and drop the USB drive into the Destination box (as per below image). Then  Click Restore.

• Disk Utility ask for the confirmation for erasing the USB drive. Click Erase and Give password if asked. Wait till the process is finished.

Now we are in Final Step to complete the Bootable USB Drive. Now you have to replace few files to your USB Drive.

Now Open Finder and Navigate to your USB drive. Open System Folder then Installation Folder. You can See “Packages” alias file (Shortcut file). Delete Packages alias file. (Now we have to copy Package folder from another location, so keep this folder open.)

Now Go back to the OS X Install ESD Mounted image. You can see “Packages” Folder. Copy the Packages Folder and Paste in the directory where you have deleted Packages alias file. (USB/SYSTEM/Installation/). Even you can drag and drop the folder. It takes few minutes to copy all the files.

Now your USB flash drive is Bootable and you can install OS X Mavericks. Just Plug your bootable flash drive and reboot your mac. While booting up Press and hold Option Key, it will ask to choose Boot Drives. Select the Pen drive (Orange Drive with USB Symbol) named “OS X Base System 1” which we created now. Now OS X Mavericks starts installing. If you have any doubts, watch below video tutorial or drop your query as comments.