20 MACWORLD DECEMBER 2019
MACUSERIMAGE: APPLEA
n external drive
that you can use as
an installer for
macOS Catalina is a
handy thing to have. If you have
multple Macs to upgrade, it’s a lot
more efficient to plug in the USB installer
drive and run the installer than to log into
the App Store, download the 8.09GB OS
installer, and then run it. In this article I’ll go
over the different ways you can create a
bootable macOS Catalina installation drive.
But before I give instructions on how to
create the drive, I’ll go over the items you’ll
need and how to get them.
GET AN EXTERNAL DRIVE AND
MAYBE AN ADAPTER
The macOS Catalina installer software
isover 8GB, so you need a USB external
drive that can hold that much data. The
drive can be a thumb drive, hard drive,
or SSD.
If you have a 2015 or newer MacBook or
a 2016 or newer MacBook Pro, you may
need Apple’s $19 USB to USB-C adapter (go.
macworld.com/usad). This will allow you to
connect a storage device that uses a USB
type-A (go.macworld.com/usba) connector. If
you don’t have an external drive and you
have a USB-C Mac laptop, you could buy the
SanDisk Ultra USB Type-C Flash Drive,How to create a
bootable macOS
Catalina installer
drive
Put the macOS Catalina installer on
an external USB thumb drive or
hard drive and use it to install the
operating system on a Mac.
BY ROMAN LOYOLA