One note of caution: Diskmaker X no longer supports creating OS X install DVDs. It's still possible to create a disk manually using a Terminal command (which we'll go into momentarily), but Diskmaker X presents an easy GUI-based way to do it that is less intimidating to most people. The app can currently make installers for OS X 10.7, 10.8, and 10.9, but we're only interested in Mavericks today.ĭiskmaker X has actually been around since the days of OS X 10.7 (it was previously known as Lion Diskmaker), but it's more important now because Apple has made alterations to the installer that prevent the old Disk Utility method from working. Once you've obtained all of the necessary materials, install the Diskmaker X app to your Applications folder.

An administrator account on the Mac you're using to create the disk.

This app is free to download, but the creator accepts donations if you want to support his efforts.

The latest version of Diskmaker X app, available here.

The installer will delete itself when you install the operating system, but it can be re-downloaded if necessary.

The OS X 10.9 Mavericks installer from the Mac App Store in your Applications folder.

An 8GB or larger USB flash drive, or an 8GB or larger partition on some other kind of external drive.

Before we get started, here’s what you’ll need:

The bad news is that it wasn’t as simple as it was before-Apple has changed the way the installer works, and making an install disk manually is more difficult than it used to be.

The good news is, as with Lion and Mountain Lion, it’s possible to create a local USB installer for Mavericks. That said, it’s still nice to have an install disk handy for those cases when you don’t have a connection, when your connection is slow, or when you just have a whole bunch of Macs and don’t want to have to download the installer on each and every one of them. These download-only installers have actually worked pretty well-I’ve never had an issue downloading the software from the Mac App Store or restoring a Mac using the Internet Recovery feature when something went south. When Apple released OS X 10.7 two years ago, it stopped selling operating system DVDs in its stores, stopped shipping recovery disks with new Macs, and switched to downloadable installers for OS X upgrades.

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