Feb 2, 2015 - In addition to system_profiler SPUSBDataType (suggested by @kjs), you can also use ioreg -p IOUSB: $ ioreg -p IOUSB +-o Root. Let go of the keys and wait for the Mac to complete starting up. (Expect it to take longer than normal.) You should see a screen saying macOS Utilitiies (or if your Mac is older, OS X Utilities).
UPDATED 12/2/18: It doesn’t matter whether you’re a macOS Sierra or a Windows 10 user, it’s just a matter of time until your device refuses to boot, which could be for a number of reasons, including file corruption, hardware failure, buggy update, etc. If the unexpected happens with Apple computer, you can use a macOS bootable USB with the installation media to repair it. This is one of the main reasons why you should always consider making a macOS bootable USB when your device is working properly. However, if it happens that none of your devices (MacBook, MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, iMac, Mac Pro or Mac Mini) are not working when you need them the most, then you can use a Windows PC to rescue your Apple device. You can use a Windows 7/8.1, or a Windows 10 PC to quickly make a USB bootable installation media to reinstall macOS Sierra on your Mac. In this, you’ll learn the steps to make a macOS Sierra bootable USB installation on Windows 10, which you can use to reinstall or upgrade Apple’s OS. Things to know before proceeding Before you dive into this guide, you’ll need a few things:.
![Usb Commands For Mac Usb Commands For Mac](/uploads/1/2/5/6/125610509/459658340.jpg)
A broken Mac computer with Mac OS X or (version 10.12 or later). A trial copy of the TransMac software. One high quality USB flash drive with 16GB of storage. A copy of Apple’s macOS (DMG file). How to make a macOS bootable USB installation media To create a bootable USB drive with the latest version of macOS, do the following:. This is a paid software, but it gives you a 15-day trial, which is more than enough time. (If this works for you and want to support the developer, you can purchase the full version.).
Connect the USB flash drive you want to use to fix your Mac. If you have any data on the USB, remember to make a backup, as everything on it will be erased. Right-click TransMac, and select Run as administrator. If you’re using the trial version, wait 15 seconds, and click Run. On the left, right-click the USB flash drive, select Format Disk for Mac. You want to do this before creating the bootable media because there is a good chance that the drive was formatted using a Windows device. If this is the case, chances are that it’s using a MBR partition, and the USB drive needs a GPT partition to work on a Mac.
On the warning message, click Yes to format the drive. Enter a name for the drive, such as “macOS bootable USB” and click OK. Click Yes to confirm.
If the formatting completed successfully, click OK to continue. Right-click the USB flash drive, and select Restore with Disk Image. On the warning message, click Yes to confirm the data on the USB drive will be erased.
Click the browse button on the right, locate the.dmg file with the macOS installation files. Click Open. Click Yes to create the macOS USB bootable media. Once the process completes, you can now insert the USB flash drive on your Mac computer to install, reinstall, or upgrade the operating system to the latest version of macOS, which can be Sierra or later. How to create a GPT partition on a USB flash drive If the USB flash drive is not working using TransMac, it could be still a partition problem.
In this case, you want to redo the entire process again, but this time use the following steps to use the Diskpart command-line utility on Windows to create the appropriate GPT partition. Open Command Prompt as an administrator. Type the diskpart command and press Enter. Enter the list disk command to view all drives connected to your computer and press Enter. Type the select disk command followed the number assigned for the USB flash drive (e.g., select disk 4), and press Enter.
Enter the clean command and press Enter. Type the convert GPT command and press Enter. Enter the create partition primary command and press Enter to complete the process. Once you formatted the USB flash drive to a GPT partition, you can use the instructions mentioned above to use TransMac to create a bootable media, but this time skip the steps 5 through 9, and continue on step 10.
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Table of Contents. Warning: This article is about trying to accomplish some things in (or ) single-user mode when your system is in trouble. In this article I assume that you’re an experienced Unix administrator, so I don’t bother to explain each command. If you don’t know what the commands in this article do, don’t use them, just take your Mac to an Apple store or Mac dealer. Be careful with all of these steps. When you’re logged in, you’ll be logged in as the root user, which means you can do a lot of damage to your system, including deleting all of the files on the system. The partial death of a 2008 iMac My 2008 iMac running Mac OS X 10.6.x partially died last night.
I was working with iMovie, put it into full-screen demo mode, and the display went nuts and the system locked up. Now it won’t boot up all the way; it stops after showing a gray screen with an Apple logo on it. The little timer animation runs briefly, then stops, and the system just sits there.
Additionally, there are 30 thick vertical lines on the screen, probably an 1/8th of an inch thick or more. I assume this means there is a problem with the video card or display. Here’s what it looks like in single-user mode: After many repeated attempts I was just now able to get the system to boot into hardware test mode with the install CD, but the short test showed no errors, even though the 30 lines are still on the display.
The longer test just showed a possible “HDD” error, but I can’t read much of the message (because of the stripes). I can get the Mac to boot into single-user mode, where I can work at the command line. Peering through the 30 vertical lines, I can see that the hard drive is there, and all of my files are still there, so I thought I’d try to make another backup of them. For a long time I couldn't get the iMac to recognize the USB drive I was plugging into the USB port, but after a while I finally figured out the magic formula. Here are the steps I used to get the iMac to recognize the USB drive (thumb drive). Fsck and mount I recommend not plugging in your USB drive yet. Then boot the system into single-user mode.
When you do, you’ll be logged in as root at a command line prompt. (Which seems like a security risk. I could walk into any office, reboot a Mac into single-user mode, then wipe their hard drive.
But that’s another story.) The first things you’re supposed to do are to run these commands: fsck -fy mount -uw / The fsck command takes a while to run, maybe 5 or 10 minutes, although that will vary depending on the size and speed of the drive. The mount command is necessary because your hard drive is mounted read-only by default, so this re-mounts it in read/write mode.
Run some launchctl commands Before running the following commands, I recommend running this ls command: ls /dev/disk. This shows which disk devices are currently on your system. I’m not logged into my system at the moment, but when I did this on my iMac, I saw three outputs here, all beginning as /dev/disk0. Because I didn’t plug in my USB drive yet, I know those device listings are for the drives already in the computer. Next, plug in your USB drive. After a few moments you should see some sort of message on screen.
With the vertical stripes I can’t really read that message on my monitor, but it’s an indicator that the Mac hardware at least recognized the USB device was plugged in. (I think part of the message showed “USB,” or possibly 'USBUHC'.). If you’re lucky If you’re lucky, you can run that ls command again, and you might see some new device files: ls /dev/disk.
If you see new files here, congratulations, you’re in better shape than I was. If so, and assuming that your USB drive is formatted as a Windows/DOS filesystem, just follow these steps to mount the device: mkdir /Volumes/usb mountmsdos /dev/disk1s1 /Volumes/usb If your USB device is formatted differently, use another mount command. I think there's a command named something like mounthfs for devices formatted with a Mac filesystem. Once that's done, you should be able to see the new filesystem with the df command: df Because /Volumes/usb refers to the root directory of your USB device, when you copy files to that directory, you're actually copying them onto the device. If these steps have worked for you, great, begin copying your files. If the USB device didn’t show up In my case, my iMac didn't immediately create any /dev/disk.
device files for my USB drive, so I had to dig deeper. In short, here's what I had to do. First, per some other websites, I ran these launchctl commands: launchctl load /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.kextd.plist launchctl load /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.notifyd.plist launchctl load /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.configd.plist launchctl load /System/Library/LaunchDaemon/com.apple.DirectoryServices.plist Those may have helped, I don't know. One of them caused the system to start posting information to my display, which combined with the vertical lines was a real pain in the butt. While that's what was recommended on other websites, I didn't see the new /dev/disk.
files until I also ran these commands: launchctl load /System/Library/LaunchDaemon/com.apple.disk. There are two 'com.apple.disk ' files in that directory, and I can't remember their names now, but the last time I was in my system I just used that command, and it worked fine. Shortly after this, the /dev/disk device files showed up. Once the /dev/disk. files show up My system created the new files with names like /dev/disk1s1, and based on information I found on other sites, I thought that was the correct device to mount. So I created my mount point like this: mkdir /Volumes/usb and then mounted the USB drive like this: mountmsdos /dev/disk1s1 /Volumes/usb After that, I copied all the files I wanted to the /Volumes/usb directory (which is really the filesystem on the USB device), and then unmounted the USB device like this: umount /dev/disk1s1 Once I saw that the /Volumes/usb result no longer showed up in the output of the df command, I removed my USB drive.
Shutting down the system I haven't looked into those plist files yet, but something about loading them was keeping my Mac from being shut down properly. So to shut my system down, I first unloaded all of the plist files like this: launchctl unload /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple. At that point I think you can shut down your system by typing exit, but I was trying to do something else next, so I used the reboot command instead. Other notes Regarding that mount point, I don't think there's anything special about using the Volumes directory.
In my younger days as a Unix admin, I'd create a mount point wherever I wanted to, so unless OS X is doing something unique, you can probably create a mount point wherever you want. As mentioned at the beginning of this article, these notes pertain to a 2008 model iMac running Mac OS X 10.6.x. Other Mac operating systems are probably at least slightly different. Summary I hope these notes have been helpful, and will save you a little time. I know they would have saved me several hours if I knew about all of this last night.