To perform a clean installation of macOS Sierra (basically, Mac OS X 10.12), I recommend using a bootable USB flash drive containing the macOS Sierra installer. Below are the steps I took to create the bootable USB flash drive and how I used it to install macOS Sierra.
If you’re using the encrypted disk image with a Mac computer using macOS 10.12 or earlier, choose Mac OS Extended (Journaled) or Mac OS Extended (Case-sensitive, Journaled). Click the Encryption pop-up menu, then choose an encryption option. Enter and re-enter a password to unlock the disk. The installer application gets automatically erased after upgrading the Mac. To create a bootable disk, you need to have the installer app. Open the Mac App Store. Click on the Purchases tab, locate macOS Sierra and click the Download button. Download Sierra or El Capitan OS from the App Store Step 2.
Note: The macOS Sierra Disk Utility and installer appears to be more buggy and much slower than previous versions. The best advice for installing macOS Sierra is to try again and be very patient (if you expect an operation to complete in 5 minutes, then give it at least 50 minutes).
Download macOS Sierra Installer
The macOS Sierra installer is available from the Mac App Store. Run the “App Store” application, search for “macOS Sierra”, and download it. It will save the installer as an “/Applications/Install macOS Sierra.app” file (about 4.97GB in size).
Note: If you run the macOS Sierra installer to upgrade your Mac, the downloaded file will be deleted automatically after the upgrade is completed. To keep that file, you will want to move it out of the Applications folder so it won’t be deleted after an upgrade. Launch the “Terminal” application and run this command to move the downloaded installer to your user’s “Downloads” folder:
sudomv/Applications/Install macOS Sierra.app/ ~/Downloads/
If you are paranoid (doesn’t hurt), you can verify that the installer file was downloaded correctly by verify its checksum. Run the “Terminal” application and this command:
hdiutil verify /Applications/Install macOS Sierra.app/Contents/SharedSupport/InstallESD.dmg
# If successful, the last output line should read:
# hdiutil: verify: checksum of '/Applications/Install macOS Sierra.app/Contents/SharedSupport/InstallESD.dmg' is VALID
# If successful, the last output line should read:
# hdiutil: verify: checksum of '/Applications/Install macOS Sierra.app/Contents/SharedSupport/InstallESD.dmg' is VALID
Format USB Flash Drive
The macOS Sierra installer takes up 5.1GB of space on the USB flash drive, so you will need a flash drive with a capacity of 8GB or greater.
Note: If the flash drive is mounted under “/Volumes” successfully when you plug it in, you can skip the following steps to reformat the flash drive. This is because the script we run to create the bootable drive will reformat the flash drive as an initial step. Because I am paranoid, I recommend reformatting the USB flash drive manually anyhow.
Format the USB flash drive using these steps:
- Plug the USB flash drive into your Mac.
- Launch the “Disk Utility” application.
- On the left-hand pane, select the USB drive (not the partition under it, if any).
- Click on the “Erase” tab (or button at the top).
- Input a name like “Sierra” (this name will be overwritten later).
- Select “Mac OS Extended (Journaled)” for “Format”.
- Select “Master Boot Record” for “Scheme”.
- Click the “Erase…” button at the bottom. Click the “Erase” button in the warning popup dialog if you get one.
- The format operation may take several minutes to complete. (USB 2.0 and large capacity drives will take longer.) After the format completes, the partition will be mounted under “/Volumes/Sierra” (or whatever name you selected above).
- Note: Under macOS Sierra, the Erase function will fail if the USB drive’s partition is mounted. You can manually unmount the partition before running Erase. Or you can run Erase twice; the first time will unmount the partition and fail, and the second time will actually do the format (which will succeed).
- Close the “Disk Utility” application.
Create Bootable USB Flash Drive Installer
To create the bootable USB macOS Sierra installer, run the “Terminal” application and this command:
# The --volume value is the mounted USB flash drive partition; in this case, named /Volumes/Sierra
sudo/Applications/Install macOS Sierra.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume/Volumes/Sierra --applicationpath/Applications/Install macOS Sierra.app --nointeraction
# You will be prompted for your user's administrative password.
sudo/Applications/Install macOS Sierra.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume/Volumes/Sierra --applicationpath/Applications/Install macOS Sierra.app --nointeraction
# You will be prompted for your user's administrative password.
Update: For macOS 10.14 Mojave (and its predecessor, macOS 10.13 High Sierra), the createinstallmedia command no longer requires the “–applicationpath” and “–nointeraction” flags, so omit them. The command becomes just “createinstallmedia –volume /Volumes/Mojave”.
Note: If the createinstallmedia command returns a “Failed to start erase of disk due to error (-9999, 0)” error, then your current Mac OS X version does not fully support the createinstallmedia tool. Instead, create the USB installation drive manually using instructions from Bootable USB Flash Drive to Install Mac OS X 10.10 Yosemite.
The “createinstallmedia” program will erase the USB flash drive, create a new partition named “Install macOS Sierra”, and copy the installation files to that partition. The output will look like:
Erasing Disk: 0%... 10%... 20%... 30%...100%...
Copying installer files to disk...
Copy complete.
Making disk bootable...
Copying boot files...
Copy complete.
Done.
Copying installer files to disk...
Copy complete.
Making disk bootable...
Copying boot files...
Copy complete.
Done.
The program will pause at the “Copying installer files to disk…” output line above. This step took 20-30 minutes with my Kingston 16GB USB 2.0 flash drive. Yours may take a shorter or longer time. I recommend giving it at least an hour, maybe two, before giving up.
Note: Mac hardware is very finicky about USB flash drives. Initially, I used a Corsair 32GB USB 3.0 drive; however, when I held down the Option key to try to boot with it, the Mac would freeze with a black startup screen. The Kingston 16GB USB 2.0 drive did not have this problem. So if you enounter issues (when erasing and copying) or weirdness (when booting), consider changing to another brand of USB flash drive. If you don’t have another drive, consider at least testing the flash drive to make sure it is not bad or corrupted (“First Aid” in “Disk Utility” is the minimum; google for more powerful tools).
Boot With USB Flash Drive
Note: I recommending connecting the Mac to its AC power adapter before beginning the macOS Sierra installation. The installation may take a long time (an hour or more) and you don’t want the battery to die in the middle.
To boot a Mac with the USB flash drive:
- Shutdown the Mac.
- Insert the USB flash drive.
- While holding the “option/alt” key down, turn on the Mac to display the boot Startup Manager.
- You should see one or more icons, one of which should be called “Install macOS Sierra” for the USB flash drive. (The internal hard drive may not be visible if it does not have a valid, bootable partition installed.)
- Note: If you don’t see the USB flash drive’s “Install macOS Sierra”, try removing and re-inserting the USB flash drive while viewing the Startup Manager screen. The USB flash drive should then appear after a few seconds.
- Select the “Install macOS Sierra” (with left/right arrow keys) and hit the “return/enter” key to boot from the USB flash drive.
It may take 5-10 minutes or longer to load the installer from the USB flash drive. Sometimes the progress bar may appear to be frozen… just be patient. I would give it at least 30-60 minutes to load before giving up.
Format the Hard Drive
![Disk Utility For Mac Os Sierra Disk Utility For Mac Os Sierra](/uploads/1/1/9/5/119565929/565512337.png)
When the installer finishes loading, you will see a “macOS Utilities” window appear. Do the following to format the internal hard drive:
- Click on the “Disk Utility” option and click the “Continue” button on the bottom to launch the “Disk Utility” application.
- On the left-hand pane, select the hard drive (not the partition under it, if any).
- Click on the “Erase” button at the top.
- Input a name like “macOS”.
- Select “Mac OS Extended (Journaled)” for “Format”.
- Select “GUID Partition Map” for “Scheme”.
- Click the “Erase…” button at the bottom.
- For SSD (Solid State Drive), the format operation may take less than a minute to complete. For mechanical hard drive, it may several minutes to hours, depending upon the size, speed, and condition of your hard drive.
- Note: Again, the Erase function will fail if the hard drive’s partition is mounted. You can manually unmount the partition before running Erase. Or you can run Erase twice; the first time will unmount the partition and fail, and the second time will actually do the format (which will succeed).
- Close the “Disk Utility” application.
Note: Now and then, I noticed the output of the Erase seems to erroneously double the size of the hard drive. For a 128GB hard drive, the graph shows 120.88GB macOS (in blue) and 120.37 GB Unformatted (in red). I think it is just a user interface bug because when I close Disk Utility and re-open it, the graph then only shows the 120.88GB macOS (in blue).
Install macOS Sierra
Back at the “macOS Utilities” window, do the following to begin the macOS Sierra installation process:
- Click on the “Install macOS” option and click the “Continue” button.
- The “macOS Sierra” installer’s splash screen will appear. Click the “Continue” button.
- Click on the “Agree” button to agree to the license. A popup confirmation window will appear; click on the popup’s “Agree” button.
- Select the hard drive and click the “Install” button.
Note: You may encounter strange hardware behavior. On my 13 inch Macbook Pro Retina, the macOS Sierra installer turned the fan on to maximum for the whole duration of the installation. Thankfully, once it finished and rebooted, the fan turned off and stayed off.
The macOS Sierra installer tries to be helpful by telling you how long it will take. Unfortunately, it lies. You should take whatever remaining time it tells you and multiple by 10 (for minutes) or 100 (for seconds). If it says “6 minutes remaining”, that could mean 60 minutes or one hour remaining. Worse, if it says “6 seconds remaining”, you may be staring at that message for 600 seconds or one hour.
The best solution is to be patient. Go grab a bite to eat and watch a movie. Take a long nap or better yet, sleep your 8 hours. I would wait at least 4 hours before giving up.
Note: You can display the installer’s log window (using the menu or pressing Cmd+L). I didn’t find this helpful at all. Even for a successful install, numerous errors are logged; I don’t know what is a critical or non-critical error. And often, you won’t see a progress/status log output for a long time, easily 20-30 minutes. Not seeing any new log statements does not mean that the installer froze. So the logs didn’t do anything for me.
What Does Giving Up Mean?
Giving up means you have accepted defeat. The next step is to retreat and try again. Some suggestions on how to proceed:
- Reset your Mac by doing the following:
- Reset the SMC (see step 3 under the “Reset the SMC on Mac notebook computers” section).
- Reset the NVRAM (aka PRAM).
- Run the Apple Hardware Diagnostic or Test to make sure you don’t have a hardware failure.
- Finally, retry the macOS Sierra install.
- Use a different USB port on the Mac.
- Use another brand of USB flash drive.
- Delete and re-download the macOS Sierra installer (especially if you downloaded it a long while ago). Even if the checksum is okay, you may want to re-download in case there is a newer version of the installer with a bug fix for your very problem.
- Download an older Mac OS X version, say Mac OS X 10.11 El Capitan, install that, and then upgrade to macOS Sierra. If you know the Mac OS X version which came with your Mac originally, consider downloading (if you still have access) and installing that version first.
- Use the Mac Recovery System to download and install the original OS version that came with your Mac. Then upgrade from that to macOS Sierra.
- Buy a more recent model Mac (at most a couple of years old). It may be that your current Mac is too old or slow to support macOS Sierra. It’s okay to keep running an old Mac OS version. (For example, if I had a Core 2 Duo Mac, I would not run anything later than Mac OS X 10.9 Mavericks on it.)
Hopefully, this post will help you to do a fresh installation of macOS Sierra.
Some info above taken from:
Overview
Disk Utility is an essential tool in the Utilities folder to reformat or re-partition a hard drive, mount or create a disc image, repair disk permissions or perform other disk “first aid,” in Mac OS X. In El Capitan, Disk Utility was improved with a more colorful edition providing at-a-glance information of how you use your disk. In the new macOS Sierra system, the new design of Disk Utility is still here. And there is more things improved for Disk Utility in macOS Sierra.
Improvements made to Disk Utility in macOS Sierra
The disk partitioning tool in Sierra is much better than the one in El Capitan, making it easier to tell where the system partition is and how much space is available on the disk. Another improvements made to Disk Utility in macOS 10.12 Sierra is Resizeable Disk Utility. The Disk Utility app in OS X El Capitan cannot be resized. Whether this was intentional or a bug remains unclear, but Apple has fixed this issue in Sierra as the Disk Utility window is once again resizeable.
Disk Utility Missing Feature in macOS Sierra: Repair Disk Permission, and the Solution
The Disk Utility app has long contained the ability to verify and repair disk permissions on a Mac, but in Mac OS X El Capitan, this feature has been removed. And the feature isn’t brought back in macOS Sierra. Since El Capitan, there are some essential changes to the way it handles files. In El Capitan and Sierra, the macOS will automatically repairs file permissions during software updates and changes.
Apple Disk Utility Download
So there is actually no need to repair file permissions any more. Though, it’s still often a useful troubleshooting step for remedy an ailing Mac, it’s a pity that the command line of repair file permissions is has been completely removed from macOS Sierra. If you open up Terminal (Applications > Utilities) and type in:
sudo /usr/libexec/repair_packages –verify –standard-pkgs /
You will get sudo: /usr/libexec/repair_packages: command not found.
Disk Utility Missing Feature in macOS Sierra: Burn CD or DVD disc, and the Solution
Another important Disk Utility missing feature in macOS Sierra is the ability to burn CDs and DVDs from Disk Utility as no Mac now ships with an optical drive.
However, if your Mac has a built-in optical drive, or if you connect an external DVD drive (for example, an Apple USB SuperDrive), you can burn files to CDs and DVDs to share your files with friends, move files between computers, or create backup files. Discs you burn on your Mac can also be used on Windows and other types of computers.
The Solution: Follow these steps to burn a CD or DVD in macOS 10.12 Sierra:
- Insert a blank CD or DVD disc.
You will see an dialog that asks you what you want to do with the disc. - Choose Open Finder from the pop-up menu.
Open Finder is the default choice unless you’ve changed that default in the CDs & DVDs System Preferences pane.Your choices are:- Open Finder: Mounts the blank disk in the Finder
- Open iTunes: Opens iTunes automatically when you insert a blank CD
- Open Other Application: Lets you choose the application to use when you insert a blank CD or DVD disc
- Run Script: Runs a specified AppleScript when you insert a blank disc.
Pick one or click the Ignore button to leave the disk in your drive without doing any of the above or the Eject button to eject the disk.If you didn’t ignore or eject the disk, if you want to make whichever action you selected the default for future disks you insert, enable the “Make This Action the Default” check box before you click OK. - Click OK.
Your blank CD or DVD mounts, and its icon appears in the Sidebar of Finder windows and on the Desktop regardless of whether your Finder Preferences are set that way. The mounted CD or DVD acts just like any other removable disc, but its distinctive icon tells you that it’s a recordable DVD (or CD). - Drag files or folders.
You can drag the files or folders onto the disc icon in the Sidebar or desktop, or open the disc and drag the files or folders to the disc’s window. Continue adding files or folders until the disc contains all the files you want on it or is full. - Arrange and rename the files
When the disc is burned, the items on the disc have the same names and locations that they have in the disc window. After the disc is burned, you cannot change the items. - click the Burn button
When you’re ready to finish (burn) your DVD (or CD), open its disc icon and click the Burn button (below the Search field near the top right). - Choose a speed from the Burn Speed pop-up menu, click the Burn button, and you’re done.
Select the Save Burn Folder To check box if you think that you may want to burn another copy of this disc someday.
Warning: CD-RW and DVD-RW disks (the RW stands for rewritable) discs rarely work in devices other than your Mac, including CD (audio) players and DVD (video) players. If you burn a music CD or video DVD and intend to watch or listen to it on a device other than your Mac, make sure the disk is a CD-R or DVD-R; NEVER use rewritable CD-RW or DVD-RW disks.
Disk Utility For Mac Os Sierra 10.13
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