EI Capitan (10.11) is the last release of OS X. After it, the OS versions are under a name called macOS. From our observation, there are still many people using EI Capitan on their Mac as some of the apps are not running on macOS. Hence, if your Mac was something wrong with it and you need to create a bootable installation media to reinstall OS X EI Capitan on your Mac. Honestly speaking, it is a tough process for EI Capitan and you might receive errors when using the dmg file downloaded from Apple website.
Please don't worry. In this tutorial, we will share you all the necessary steps to make a bootable EI Capitan bootable USB on a Windows 10 PC. Here is a screenshot of our tutorial's output.
P.S. If you have a Mac, then please follow this official guide to create EI Capitan USB installer on macOS by using createinstallmedia command: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201372
OS X El Capitan; Create the bootable Catalina USB drive. After everything has been downloaded, there is another few steps that you’ll need to take. First and foremost, make sure that that drive has at least 12GB of available storage. Then, plug the USB flash drive into your Mac. Jan 13, 2020 presumably because quite reasonably it would not make sense to install on top of a later version of the OS. However in this case I want to create a boot USB drive for an installation on another Mac. I am stuck in a chicken and egg situation where I need another machine running El Capitan or earlier to create and El Capitan boot installer. One way is to use DiskMakerX to create a bootable USB drive with a downloaded install image of the OSX loaded on it. This method requires 1) a functioning second Mac for running DiskMakerX and 2) a USB drive with at least 12 GB available. The method is summarized in a comment in this Apple Community discussion thread. I read through it though but what I needed was a way to make a bootable El Capitan USB (for use in an older Mac) while on a newer Mac running Catalina. Plug in your USB device that is larger than 8 GB that you'll be making bootable and putting the El Capitan installer on.
sudo /Applications/Install OS X El Capitan.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/USBVolume --applicationpath /Applications/Install OS X El Capitan.app
Preparation
Please get started, there are a few things you should prepare for.
First, a USB drive with at least 16 GB storage as the installation file of EI Capitan (.dmg) is over 5.5GB. USB 3.0 is more recommended as it has faster reading and writing speed. This will save a lot of time.
Secondly, download EI Capitan (10.11.6) DMG file from this link: This is the modified version of Apple's dmg file dedicated for USB booting.
Warning: The download file hosted on Apple.com (InstallMacOSX.dmg) will only work on Mac platform. For creating installation media on Windows, please use the above link instead. The dmg file provided by Apple contains a .pkg file in DMG archive, which will result failure if you are using it on a PC.
Tutorial: How to Create EI Capitan Bootable USB on Windows 10 PC
To make a bootable USB from EI Capitan dmg file, we need a special software in place. In our case, it is UUByte DMG Editor, an award-winning app for creating bootable OS X and macOS USB installer.
Step 1: Install UUByte DMG Editor on your PC and open it from Desktop shortcut. After that, plug in a USB drive into the computer and eject other unused USB devices.
Step 2: Click Burn button from welcome screen and import downloaded EI Capitan DMG file into the program. You will also see USB drive name in second field.
Step 3: Click Burn button at the bottom to write dmg file to USB drive. There is a progress bar on the screen. This tells how much time left for the burning task.
Make Bootable El Capitan Usb On Catalina Mac
Step 4: Wait for 5-10 minutes and a bootable EI Capitan installation disk is created. You need to wait more time for USB 2.0 device.
Make Bootable Usb Drive Dos
Install OS X EI Capitan on Your Mac
Make Bootable El Capitan Usb On Catalina Island
Before installation starts, make sure the hardware meets the minimal requirements of EI Capitan. You can check it from here: https://support.apple.com/kb/SP728?locale=en_US
To install EI Capitan from USB, please insert the bootable disk into Mac. Keep pressing Option button during startup. You will see a drive name (Install OS X EI Capitan) on startup window. Click on it to enter into OS X Recovery mode.
Make Bootable El Capitan Usb On Catalina Os
From macOS Utitilies window, click Reinstall macOS and follow the screen prompt to install EI Capitan on your Mac.
The above is a complete tutorial that shows you how to easily create a bootable USB installer from EI Capitan DMG file on a Windows PC. And this is the easiest method you could find. No complex settings and command line!