How to Start Up Your Mac from a Bootable CD/DVD, External USB Storage or USB Thumb Device

Requirements

Starting up your Mac from an external disk requires the following:
  • Intel-based Mac
  • Bootable optical media (CD or DVD) on Macs equipped with Apple’s Super Drive or a USB thumb drive formatted with a GUID partition type and containing an OS X installer or a usable operating system. 
Apple advises against booting from external storage containing a version of Mac OS X earlier than the one your Mac shipped with.

How to start up your Mac from a bootable CD/DVD

Step 1: Turn on your Mac by pressing the power button, or restart it if it’s already on by choosing Restart in the Apple menu.

Step 2: Press and hold the C key on your keyboard immediately upon hearing the startup chime. Your Mac should start up from the OS X installer CD/DVD media. You can also press the left mouse button on a wired mouse during the startup in order to open the disc tray.

Tip: You can easily burn a bootable image of OS X to a DVD using Disk Utility.

How to start up your Mac from an external USB storage device

If your USB thumb drive, USB-based external disk or flash storage contains a usable operating system or an OS X installer, you can select it at boot time using OS X’S built-in feature called Startup Manager, which can be invoked via a simple keystroke.

Step 1: Turn on your Mac by pressing the power button by choosing Restart in the Apple menu, or restart it if it’s already on.

Step 2: Press and hold the Option (⌥) key immediately upon hearing the startup chime. Release the key after Startup Manager appears. Startup Manager will scan and list connected drives and volumes that can be booted from, as shown below.


Step 3: Highlight the volume you want to use by using your mouse or trackpad, or left and right arrow keys on the keyboard.

Step 4: Double-click or press the Return key to boot your Mac from the selected volume.

Tip: If there are several USB storage devices connected to your Mac, Startup Manager will only list the ones containing bootable volumes.

How to start up your Mac from an external volume using System Preferences

You can use System Preferences to tell your Mac to automatically use optical media or an USB-based external disk or flash storage every time it’s restarted.

Step 1: Open the System Preferences application in the Dock.

Step 2: Now click the Startup Disk panel. You will be presented with various disk icons.


Step 3: Select the system you would like to use to start your computer up.

Step 4: Now click the Restart button to start up your Mac using the chosen volume.

Tip: Your Mac will now always boot into the selected startup disk until you change it in System Preferences, or temporarily override it through Startup Manager.

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