How to Boot a Mac from an External Drive or Alternate Startup Disk

Boot a Mac from an External Drive or Alternate Startup Disk

Nowadays while considering the portability and light weight use, laptops are designed with only necessary features. CD or DVD drivers are no longer in use, especially in Mac machines and other brands of laptop having screen size below thirteen inches.

Without CD drivers only USB ports are the right gateway to reinstall software or operating systems. Though, it not takes too much time to do that and you can boot your Mac with few simple steps described below for all MacBook including MacBook Air and MacBook Pro.  

Mac Lion Installer 

To carry out this process you have to download Mac Lion installer from app store. All the apps for Mac systems are available at app store. The downloading process can take time depending on internet connection speed on your Mac computer.

Installer File for Moving Contents 

Now you have to use the installer for access contents. Right click on the installer file and click on “Show package contents” that will show you a new window with contents of installer file.  Navigate contents to Shared Support and if you face problem just call to MacBook Technical Support 1-800-281-3707 and you will find the path to navigate the access.

Keep Backup for USB Drive 

Now keep backups of the installer that you have downloaded from app store. Keep this backup on your Mac desktop and don’t work on the original installer file. And now you have to utilize this backup file to make a bootable USB drive.


Disk Utility Application 

Now you can view disk imaged known as “InstallESD.dmg that will help you create a copy of bootable OSX mountain lion. Open Disk utility app and drag the “InstallESD.dmg” file from installer folder into the white space given on the left side of disk utility and disk image will be added that will help you at crucial stages.  

Connect USB Drive and Erase 

Now connect your USB drive to the Mac and select the USB from the Disk utility to erase and you can rename the title and you can clean the USB disk and restore it to single clean and usable partition. Click on “InstallESD.dmg and hit on restore to complete the process. Now close the disk and you have a bootable USB disk drive for Mac. You can also get Mac OS X support 1-800-281-3707 to perform this booting process in a better way in short time.