El Capitan installation questions

[colonel179]

Hello,
I have a new Mac that came with Yosemite and I want to do a fresh install, but I have few questions:

1. If I have El Capitan in my purchased tab, can I use internet recovery to download and install El Capitan from scratch (erased SDD), or is it only used to recover the OS that came with the Mac (Yosemite).

2. I have a support page from Apple on how to do a bootable drive: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201372, however it is for Yosemite. Does anyone know how the code should be for installing El Capitan?

3. I don't want to use a third-party app to make a bootable drive, and I remember that I did one for OS X Lion to install it, but it was completely different then. So, can someone please help me make the bootable drive, so that I can be able to erase the SDD completely and install EL Capitan.

Thank you very much!

 

[KALLT]

Hello,
I have a new Mac that came with Yosemite and I want to do a fresh install, but I have few questions:

1. If I have El Capitan in my purchased tab, can I use internet recovery to download and install El Capitan from scratch (erased SDD), or is it only used to recover the OS that came with the Mac (Yosemite).

2. I have a support page from Apple on how to do a bootable drive: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201372, however it is for Yosemite. Does anyone know how the code should be for installing El Capitan?

3. I don't want to use a third-party app to make a bootable drive, and I remember that I did one for OS X Lion to install it, but it was completely different then. So, can someone please help me make the bootable drive, so that I can be able to erase the SDD completely and install EL Capitan.

Thank you very much!

1. Internet recovery will only let you install the OS your Mac shipped with.
2. Well the process seems identical for both Mavericks and Yosemite so it should also work with El Capitan. If not then you can always check for an alternative.
3. See 2. All you need is a simple Terminal command, that’s it.

Alternatively, launch the El Capitan installer and let it complete the first step, which is updating your recovery partition. After it is done it will reboot your Mac into the recovery partition and install the system. Instead of doing the latter, boot into Recovery OS, format your main OS partition and install El Capitan from scratch.

 

[RRKPL]

Is there a way to save the install file so I don't have to download it on each of my macs. I have a bootable FireWire drive that I'd like to put the install on and take it around to other machines

 

[definitive]

Is there a way to save the install file so I don't have to download it on each of my macs. I have a bootable FireWire drive that I'd like to put the install on and take it around to other machines

You can follow these instructions (should be same for El Capitan) to #3 to backup the InstallESD.dmg file somewhere. Having that file backed up, you can then create a USB installer drive using DiskMaker X. I think you'll need at least an 8GB flash drive.

Another solution is to create a USB installer using the Terminal. This page has more instructions on how it's done.