Dual Boot USB Installer: Yosemite & Mavericks

dual-boot-usb-startup-screenPartition a 16 GB USB Drive into two volumes. Make each volume a bootable OS X Installer for two different versions, in this example Yosemite and Mavericks.

Erase:
Using Disk Utilities, erase the USB using Mac OS Extended (Journaled).

erase-usb

Partition:
Set each to Mac OS Extended (Journaled)
Take out the space in “Untitled1” and “Untitled2″

partition-usb

You can download the Yosemite installer and it will go into the Applications folder. Do not run the installer.

You will need to have a copy of the Mavericks installer from a previous download. It is no longer available from Apple. Place it in the Applications folder.

Copy and paste each of the following commands into a Terminal window. The location of the installers and the name of the Untitled volumes must match.

Make Mavericks USB boot drive (Untitled1)

sudo /Applications/Install\ OS\ X\ Mavericks.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia –volume /Volumes/Untitled1 –applicationpath /Applications/Install\ OS\ X\ Mavericks.app —nointeraction

Make Yosemite boot drive (Untitled2)

sudo /Applications/Install\ OS\ X\ Yosemite.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia –volume /Volumes/Untitled2 –applicationpath /Applications/Install\ OS\ X\ Yosemite.app –nointeraction

Once complete, you will have two bootable volumes that can be selected holding the “Option” key when starting up your Mac.

dual-usb-yosemite-mavericks

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