MacOS – I can copy El Capitan installation on thumb drive but it is not visible when I hold option key on restart

macosssd

I am using OS X El Capitan on Macbook 7.1 (Mid-2010). My thumbdrive is detected inside El Capitan and I can make it bootable and put El Capitan installation on it by using terminal command: 

sudo /Applications/Install\ OS\ X\ El\ Capitan.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/Untitled --applicationpath /Applications/Install\ OS\ X\ El\ Capitan.app --nointeraction

but thumb drive is not visible when I hold option on restart. Therefore I can't install El Capitan on my new SSD that I have. When I install using terminal, I get this message at the end of the process, in terminal:

Couldn't mount dmg /Volumes/Install OS X El Capitan/Install OS X El Capitan.app/Contents/SharedSupport/InstallESD.dmg (error code 112)Mount of outer dmg failed.

After this, when I ran the hdiutil:

hdiutil verify Install\ OS\ X\ El\ Capitan.app/Contents/SharedSupport/InstallESD.dmg

on the thumb drive, I got:

Checksumming Protective Master Boot Record (MBR : 0)… Protective Master Boot Record (MBR :: checksum failed with error 1000. …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… calculated CRC32 $00000000, expected CRC32 $BE5D6293 hdiutil: verify: checksum of "Install OS X El Capitan.app/Contents/SharedSupport/InstallESD.dmg" is INVALID hdiutil: verify failed – image data corrupted

So the error can be either on the installation or the thumb drive itself (bad drive).

Sometimes I get this message at the end of the installation thumbdrive making process:

Failed to copy kernelcache, The file “kernelcache” couldn’t be opened because there is no such file.

I want to install fresh clean install of El Capitan on my brand new SSD that I bought, and somehow Apple is preventing me from using it. Any help anyone?

Best Answer

  • (Download the latest El Capitan Installer (10.11.3))

  • Open Terminal and check the hash of InstallESD.dmg:

    shasum /Applications/Install\ OS\ X\ El\ Capitan.app/Contents/SharedSupport/InstallESD.dmg

    The result (as of March, 5th 2016) should be: 526a6f7a619ef86f42acc026276aab351ea27614

  • Insert your thumb drive

  • Get the disk identifier of the thumb drive with

    diskutil list

    Below I assume the disk identifier of the thumb drive is disk1

  • Delete any MBR on the thumb drive:

    diskutil umountDisk /dev/disk1
sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/disk1 bs=512 count=1
diskutil mountDisk /dev/disk1

  • Open Disk Utility and partition the thumb drive:

    Options...: GUID partition table
    Name: Untitled
    Format: Mac OS X Extended (Journaled)

  • Create the El Capitan Installer thumb drive:

    sudo /Applications/Install\ OS\ X\ El\ Capitan.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/Untitled --applicationpath /Applications/Install\ OS\ X\ El\ Capitan.app --nointeraction

    The output looks like this:

    Erasing Disk: 0%... 10%... 20%... 30%...100%...
Copying installer files to disk...
Copy complete.
Making disk bootable...
Copying boot files...
Copy complete.
Done.

  • Check the InstallESD.dmg on the thumb drive:

    hdiutil verify /Volumes/Install\ OS\ X\ El\ Capitan/Install\ OS\ X\ El\ Capitan.app/Contents/SharedSupport/InstallESD.dmg

    The output should look like this:

    Checksumming Protective Master Boot Record (MBR : 0)…
Protective Master Boot Record (MBR :: verified   CRC32 $8A0AD7CD
Checksumming GPT Header (Primary GPT Header : 1)…
 GPT Header (Primary GPT Header : 1): verified   CRC32 $E61CC7FE
Checksumming GPT Partition Data (Primary GPT Table : 2)…
GPT Partition Data (Primary GPT Tabl: verified   CRC32 $8F9F9AF5
Checksumming  (Apple_Free : 3)…
                    (Apple_Free : 3): verified   CRC32 $00000000
Checksumming EFI System Partition (C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B : 4)…
....
EFI System Partition (C12A7328-F81F-: verified   CRC32 $B54B659C
Checksumming disk image (Apple_HFS : 5)…
.................................................................................................................................
          disk image (Apple_HFS : 5): verified   CRC32 $F1A0F123
Checksumming  (Apple_Free : 6)…
...................................................................................................................................
                    (Apple_Free : 6): verified   CRC32 $00000000
Checksumming GPT Partition Data (Backup GPT Table : 7)…
...................................................................................................................................
GPT Partition Data (Backup GPT Table: verified   CRC32 $8F9F9AF5
Checksumming GPT Header (Backup GPT Header : 8)…
....................................................................................................................................
  GPT Header (Backup GPT Header : 8): verified   CRC32 $5826D5C7
....................................................................................................................................
verified   CRC32 $BE5D6293
hdiutil: verify: checksum of "/Volumes/Install OS X El Capitan/Install OS X El Capitan.app/Contents/SharedSupport/InstallESD.dmg" is VALID

    Some of the CRC32 values may be different in your output!

  • Reboot you Mac with the thumb drive attached and hold the alt/opt button. If the thumb drive doesn't show up on the first run just repeat the step. It took me 2 tries to successfully boot to the installer thumb drive.

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