Is a GUID partition absolutely necessary for an installer drive?

[CLOD-HOPPER]

Yesterday, for my own good reasons, I wanted to put a Mavericks (10.9.5) installer onto an 8GB flash drive. To do so, I used a Terminal command (copied from the Web), and this transferred all the installer files. However, although previously, I had erased the flash drive and re-formatted it as HFS+ Extended (Journaled), I failed to first choose to make it a GUID Partition.

Will this omission prevent the installer from working properly?

Thanks in advance, to anyone that can give a definite reply either way,
C.H.

 

[Fishrrman]

Why don't you try booting from it and see?

I'm going to -guess- that when you initialized the drive to HFS+ with journaling enabled, that Disk Utility created it in GUID format automatically.

 

[CLOD-HOPPER]

Why don't you try booting from it and see?

I did try booting from it, and it booted OK. However, when it came to do the actual installation (on a spare partition), it stuck at "1 second remaining" for ages and ages. Finally, a message came up that said, "Cannot install because a recovery partition cannot be created" (or something like that — a lot has happened since, and I don't clearly remember). So, I revisited the Webpage from where I got the Terminal command (to put the installer on the flash-drive), and saw something about choosing GUID partition, as a kind of preliminary. I had not noticed that, before copying the Terminal command that it stated (yes, it was very careless of me), so it was natural for me to assume that the omission of that preliminary led to the failure of the installer, to install. I posted my query (in this forum) in an attempt to get expert opinion, seeing that the installer that I had downloaded from the App Store had been deleted. I assumed that, once it had been put onto the flash drive, it would be redundant.
Any response from you, to the above, would be appreciated (except remarks like "you dozy so-and-so!"
C.H.

 

[Fishrrman]

Hmmm.. where are you trying to install the OS?

Onto a partition on the internal drive (that already has the OS installed on -another- partition)?

Back before the days of the recovery partition, it was easy enough to install multiple versions of the OS onto separate partitions. But the "coming of the recovery partition" makes this more problematic.

I'd suggest you try installing onto an external drive.
At least, do that first.
If you absolutely want it on a second partition on your internal drive, I'd then use CarbonCopyCloner to "clone from the external drive to the second partition", and see if that did the job...

 

[CLOD-HOPPER]

Hmmm.. where are you trying to install the OS?

Onto a partition on the internal drive (that already has the OS installed on -another- partition)?

Back before the days of the recovery partition, it was easy enough to install multiple versions of the OS onto separate partitions. But the "coming of the recovery partition" makes this more problematic.

I'd suggest you try installing onto an external drive.
At least, do that first.
If you absolutely want it on a second partition on your internal drive, I'd then use CarbonCopyCloner to "clone from the external drive to the second partition", and see if that did the job...

OK. It was to be installed on a spare partition on my Mac. The hard drive is divided into three partitions. Thanks for your comments, friend.