Creating An OS X-Bootable Flash Drive

When it comes to troubleshooting hardware and software problems, you usually would like to keep the main hard drive of your system free, so that you can run diagnostic programs on it. Hard to do when you need to boot from that main hard drive. Having a version of the operating system on a flash drive would be ideal. The folks over in Windows XP-land have had this option available to them for a while, but no well-presented solution had been available for us on the OS X-continent. Until now.

Brad Bergeron explains in this blog post how you can create a bootable version of OS X on your own flash drive. Besides the fact that you can troubleshoot with it, you can also pop it in someone else's Mac, choose the flash drive for startup, and work within your own environment on apps and docs. Brad says you'll need at least a 1 GB flash drive to make it happen, but with the prices of flash drives coming down every day, I'd say 2 GB or better would get you more elbow room. Flash drives run faster, cooler, and might just help you out in a pinch someday. I'm going to create one myself as soon as possible.

HOWTO: Install and Boot OS X on a Flash Drive