Can I split an installation across multiple USB drives? Disk operations on the boot drive can be performed safely from a USB stick as well. You can now run the operating system as normal and use this USB drive to boot up your Mac. If you’re using an Apple Silicon machine, you’ll need to insert the USB drive, shut the Mac down, then reboot and hold the Power key until you come to the Startup Manager.įor Intel Macs, restart and hold the Option key to enter into the boot selection dialog.įor both types of machines, use your keyboard’s arrow keys to select the USB drive from the list of bootable devices, click to confirm, and your USB drive will begin to boot. You could also use the Startup Manager to select your boot drive when you start macOS.
Your Mac will reboot from the USB instead of your default startup disk.
