

Use your keyboard's arrow keys to select the USB flash drive, which, if you haven't changed the name, will be OS X Base System.Ĥ. Restart your Mac while holding down the option keyģ. Why tempt fate? Use one of the USB ports on your Mac.Ģ.
UNTOUCHED MAC OS X MAVERICKS INSTALLER INSTALL
While it may work fine, sometimes you can run into an issue that will cause the install to fail. I don't recommend using an external USB hub for the installation. Plug the USB flash drive that contains the Mavericks installer into one of the USB ports on your Mac. Now that you have a bootable USB flash drive containing the OS X Mavericks Installer (see page 1), and a current backup, you're ready to start the clean install of Mavericks on your Mac.ġ. Once you complete these two preliminary tasks, you're ready to begin the clean install process.

You can do this by following these instructions: Create a Bootable Version of the OS X Mavericks Installer on a USB Flash Drive
UNTOUCHED MAC OS X MAVERICKS INSTALLER UPGRADE
This works fine for the upgrade install and the non-startup drive install, but it doesn't allow you to erase your startup drive, a necessary process if you want to perform a clean install. Instead, you run the installation app directly on your Mac under the older version of OS X. Unlike the older versions of OS X that were distributed on optical media, the downloaded versions of OS X don't provide a bootable installer. However, when it comes to performing a clean install of Mavericks on a startup drive, the process is a bit more difficult. The OS X Installer can perform both an upgrade install (the default) and a clean install on a non-startup drive. Screen shot courtesy of Coyote Moon, Inc.
