Creating OS X Bootable Installer without Installer from App Store

[tennisproha]

How do you create a Bootable Installer of your currently installed OS without having access to the Installer?

I have Mavericks installed on my Mac. I want to create a Mavericks OS X Bootable Installer but I don't have the actual Installer file from the Mac App Store. My Mac came pre-installed with Mavericks so I never actually got a chance to purchase it in the Mac App Store. Since then I have purchased Yosemite and El Capitan from the App Store so I'm able to create Bootable Installers for those but not for Mavericks.

How would I go about doing this? Again, I currently have Mavericks installed and it has a Recovery HD as well. My goal is to create a Bootable Installer for Mavericks before I update to the latest OS. All the guides I've found thus far require downloading the purchased Installer from the Mac App Store.

Thanks.

 

[chrfr]

How do you create a Bootable Installer of your currently installed OS without having access to the Installer?

I have Mavericks installed on my Mac. I want to create a Mavericks OS X Bootable Installer but I don't have the actual Installer file from the Mac App Store. My Mac came pre-installed with Mavericks so I never actually got a chance to purchase it in the Mac App Store. Since then I have purchased Yosemite and El Capitan from the App Store so I'm able to create Bootable Installers for those but not for Mavericks.

How would I go about doing this? Again, I currently have Mavericks installed and it has a Recovery HD as well. My goal is to create a Bootable Installer for Mavericks before I update to the latest OS. All the guides I've found thus far require downloading the purchased Installer from the Mac App Store.

Thanks.

This is a somewhat complex process, but it'll work.
https://derflounder.wordpress.com/2015/09/29/downloading-older-versions-of-os-x-using-recovery/

 

[tennisproha]

This is a somewhat complex process, but it'll work.
https://derflounder.wordpress.com/2015/09/29/downloading-older-versions-of-os-x-using-recovery/

Thanks! Is the InstallESD.dmg file the installer itself? Its not a .app file so I'm assuming its not... in that case how would I go about creating a Bootable Installer for that file?

I was hoping there would be a way to create a Bootable Installer of the OS utilizing Recovery HD.

Honestly, Its a bit weird that the OS your Mac ships with can't be downloaded to create a Bootable Installer. I got my Mac after Yosemite was released so I had no way of "purchasing" Mavericks from the Mac App Store to begin with...

 

[tennisproha]

Anyone else have any additional input? I guess my follow-up question is is there a way to turn the InstallESD.dmg file into the Install OS X.app file? Or directly extract the .app installer from the system? Thanks.

 

[Fizgig777]

Normally, I just clone the machine or create a recovery disk image for it... That way you can restore your machine to the exact state it was in before you upgraded anything. It's a lot faster than installing everything from scratch should you not like the updated OS. When you do a restore, you can always choose to not restore users or apps or whatever.... Should you want to restore back to "factory" for some reason.

Not sure if that helps you, but it is another option ... IMO, a more workable one than trying to deal with Apple's convoluted download process for OS X (I haven't had ONE work for me flawlessly yet and have had to resort to other sources for OS updates). I mean, seriously, if the OS is free, why make it such a miserably obnoxious process to download it, y'know?

Anyway.... Hope that helps in some way.