Mac Recovery Stick

[SkinnyMoose]

Mac Mini M1 Apple Silicon 2021 Sonoma.
I made a MacOS Sonoma USB Recovery Stick, and I was able to recover a crashed offline Mac with it.
1) If I use an Apple Silicon Mac to create a USB recovery stick, can I also use that stick to recover an Intel Mac?
2) If I use an Apple Silicon Mac to create a USB Sonoma recovery stick, can I also use that stick to recover a 2010 Mac?
Thanks.

 

[Ben J.]

It seems like "Recovery stick" is a term mostly used in the Windows world, with macs it's commonly known as a bootable USB drive.

Create a bootable installer for macOS - Apple Support

Use an external drive or secondary volume as a startup disk from which to install macOS.

support.apple.com

Yes, it's required that it's Mac OS Extended format, so it will work on quite old macs, even though it's created on a modern mac with APFS file system. But that doesn't mean you will be able to install the macOS version that's on it. Sonoma is not compatible with a 2010 mac, f.ex. So the mac will read it, but you won't be able to boot from it, and it won't let you install Sonoma.

But you could use a modern M-mac with Sonoma to create a bootable installer w/Catalina f.ex, and use it to install on a 2018 intel mac. You'll have to check compatibility charts.

Btw, these bootable installers don't have to be sticks or thumb drives. They can be created on any USB drive, or partition. I know there are people with multiple partitions on a portable drive, each with a different version of the macOS installer, so they can install any macOS from that drive.

Also, the term "recovery" in mac speak, most often refers to the invisible recovery partition that exist on all macs that we boot from to reinstall macOS and do other maintenance. I think when you say you "recovered a crashed mac" that you mean that you reinstalled it's system.

 

[Joeronzk]

To recover an offline Mac, the most important thing is to know which macOS version this device supports. After that, you can create a correct macOS bootable USB to start a new install.

 

[SkinnyMoose]

Thank you J, at first I thought you were a ChatGPT, but then I realized I clicked on a different forum post of mine.
"multiple partitions on a portable drive, each with a different version"
I believe you, because I can do similar wizardry on Windoze. Please reply with the link to the article about that.

 

[gilby101]

2) If I use an Apple Silicon Mac to create a USB Sonoma recovery stick, can I also use that stick to recover a 2010 Mac?

No. You would have to use a version of macOS which is supported for the 2010 Mac. And that is tricky because you would be using an Intel-only version of macOS. It would be easier to make the bootable installer (that is what you mean isn't it?) on the old Mac whilst it is still working. You might find MIST helps to create bootable installers for old macOS versions not supported by your Mac.