Mac osx boot drive

Question

I want to mac a usb boot drive for my 2012 mac mini. Can I do it?

Answer 1

Do you wish to install Mountain Lion on the external drive or do you want to clone your existing startup drive to the external drive? The latter is fairly easy to do:
Clone Lion/Mountain Lion using Restore Option of Disk Utility
Boot to the Recovery HD:
Restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the COMMAND and R keys until the menu screen appears. Alternatively, restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the OPTION key until the boot manager screen appears. Select the Recovery HD and click on the downward pointing arrow button.
     1. Select Disk Utility from the main menu then press the Continue
         button.
     2. Select the destination volume from the left side list.
     3. Click on the Restore tab in the DU main window.
     4. Check the box labeled Erase destination.
     5. Select the destination volume from the left side list and drag it
         to the Destination entry field.
     6. Select the source volume from the left side list and drag it to
         the Source entry field.
     7. Double-check you got it right, then click on the Restore button.
Destination means the external backup drive. Source means the internal startup drive.
The former is a little bit more difficult:
Install or Reinstall Lion/Mountain Lion from Scratch
Be sure you backup your files to an external drive or second internal drive because the following procedure will remove everything from the hard drive.
Boot to the Recovery HD:
Restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the COMMAND and R keys until the menu screen appears. Alternatively, restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the OPTION key until the boot manager screen appears. Select the Recovery HD and click on the downward pointing arrow button.
Erase the hard drive:
  1. Select Disk Utility from the main menu and click on the Continue button.
  2. After DU loads select your external HDD from the left side list.
      Click on the Erase tab in the DU main window.
  3. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on
      the Erase button and wait until the process has completed.
  4. Quit DU and return to the main menu.
Reinstall Lion: Select Reinstall Lion/Mountain Lion and click on the Install button. Be sure you have selected the external drive as the target.
Note: You will need an active Internet connection. I suggest using Ethernet if possible
            because it is three times faster than wireless.