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Has anyone installed El Capitan w/o using USB drive?

2

212rikanmofo

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Jan 31, 2003
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For those with the new 12" RMB, how did you install El Capitan w/o the use of a USB flash drive? Is it possible to create a temporary 2nd partition and install the installation image on there, reboot and select that 2nd partition and update to El Capitan, and when all is finished, delete the 2nd partition entirely?

If so can somebody please explain to me the steps needed in order to do it this way?
 
Yep - I installed as an upgrade from Yosemite - no problems at all. Seems to be running very well - so far no big issues (other than some display corruption in the latest build of the Office 2016 demo)

Running beta software on a beta operating system :)

As far as I can see the only way to do a clean install would be using a USB drive or possibly a Netboot install from an OSX server.
 
running DP1 El Capitan on my MacBook. I am very surprised how smooth it is. Animations and switching through Apps is def faster! Hardly any lag.

And FINALLY I have got my fast reliable WiFi connection back (after a lot of speed drops in Yosemite 10.10.3)
For a first DP I am very very impressed!
 
Basically, you'll need to use Disk Utility to resize your first partition and create your second one. Then install El Capitan to that second partition.

After the install, you can hold the option key at boot to pick which partition you want to boot to. (Alternatively, go into System Preferences --> Startup Disk, and select which partition to boot from upon restart.)

Once you're done playing with the beta, go back into Disk Utility, delete your test partition, and resize your main partition to get your space back.

One thing, you'll need to hold CMD+R on boot to go into your recovery partition and use Disk Utility from there. You can't resize the partition you're currently booted into.
 
Wait, can I install the beta of El Capitan or do I have to wait until July? Thanks.

Drew
 
Jetcat3 said:
Wait, can I install the beta of El Capitan or do I have to wait until July? Thanks.

Drew
Click to expand...
It's a developer preview only for now, so you need to be a registered developer to access the beta.
 
Dayv said:
It's a developer preview only for now, so you need to be a registered developer to access the beta.
Click to expand...
Or just head to any torrent site and download it there. I did, and it is working great! No need for USB either, just start the installer and it does the rest for you. I have a Time Capsule backup of 10.10.4 in case i get any problems, but none so far.
 
212rikanmofo said:
For those with the new 12" RMB, how did you install El Capitan w/o the use of a USB flash drive? Is it possible to create a temporary 2nd partition and install the installation image on there, reboot and select that 2nd partition and update to El Capitan, and when all is finished, delete the 2nd partition entirely?

If so can somebody please explain to me the steps needed in order to do it this way?
Click to expand...

I created a second partition in Disk Utility. Because I wanted to replicate my current setup as close as possible, I cloned my existing drive onto the new partition using Carbon Copy Cloner, then booted into that partition, and downloaded the El Capitan developer preview. However, I did notice that when I booted back into the main partition, I got a kernel panic the first time I rebooted. That happened to me before when I booted into an external drive that I had cloned using Carbon Copy Cloner, so I think it might have something to do with that.
 
keviig said:
Or just head to any torrent site and download it there. I did, and it is working great! No need for USB either, just start the installer and it does the rest for you. I have a Time Capsule backup of 10.10.4 in case i get any problems, but none so far.
Click to expand...
If you choose to do this, I hope you at least do an md5 checksum against a known good version to make sure you haven't gotten a copy that's been tampered with.
 
I thought it was too buggy so I uninstalled it after trying it for a couple of days. Maybe I'll do another attempt when they are at Beta 3 or so.
 
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