With the advances in technology, faster data access (SSD), and slimming hardware footprints, legacy technologies are typically the first cuts made to get these devices thinner and lighter while making them more powerful and efficient. Installing OS X has never really been a particularly difficult task, but try doing that on a MacBook Air or a system with a broken optical drive. Not so easy anymore is it? Even downloading the OS from the Mac App Store wouldn't do when the hard drive needs replacing or the Recovery Partition is corrupt. Luckily, Macs have a couple of options, specifically USB booting, and since most have an SD card slot, we can use those as well. Creating a USB Installer for Apple OS X 10.7-10.8 Before proceeding, we'll need the following items to complete the process: • 8GB USB Flash Drive (or SD Card) • Install OS X Mountain Lion.app (installer downloaded from Mac App Store) • Apple computer with Mac App Store (OS X 10.6.8+) • User Account with Administrative privileges Follow these steps: 1.

You'll need to start with a clean thumb drive or external hard drive in order to make it a bootable drive. Plug the thumb drive or cable for your hard drive into the appropriate port on your Mac. Click on Finder in your Dock to open a Finder window. Select Applications from the list on the left side of the window. Insert the USB drive into the Mac and launch Disk Utility. Click on the USB drive from the left-hand menu and select the Partition tab.

Using a Mac with at least OS X 10.6.8 installed, access the Mac App Store and download the Lion (10.7) or Mountain Lion (10.8) app installer. Insert the USB drive into the Mac and launch Disk Utility. Click on the USB drive from the left-hand menu and select the Partition tab. Click the drop-down menu, selecting 1 partition. Select Mac OS Extended (Journaled) for the format-type from the drop-down menu. ( Figure A) 6.

Click on the Options button and select the radio button for GUID Partition Table and click OK. ( Figure B) 7. Rufus 2.11 for mac.

Upon completion of the USB formatting, locate Install Mac OS X Mountain Lion.app (downloaded in step #1 to the Applications folder, by default). Right-click the file and select Show Package Contents. ( Figure C) 8.

Navigate the file structure Contents Shared Support and drag the InstallESD.dmg file to the desktop. ( Figure D) 9. Go back to Disk Utility and click on the newly formatted USB Drive in the menu, then click on the Restore tab. In the Source textbox, click the Image button and select the InstallESD.dmg file on your Desktop. For Destination, drag & drop the partition created on the USB drive onto the textbox. ( Figure E) 11. Upon verifying that the fields are correct, click the Restore button and select Erase from the application, if prompted to do so.