Error creating bootable USB For two days my Mac has been "dead"; the hard drive crashed, so I reformatted (twice). I wanted to reinstall Mavericks via Recovery, but at the end of the process it shows nearly 1 million minutes remaining and the process stops. I thought it was the hard drive that was dead but the Windows (BootCamp) part works very well.

I wanted to make a bootable USB of it (Using MacBook Air which is running OS X Mavericks GM), but when I tried to run the command for copying the files from .app to USB I got the following error:

Erasing Disk:
0%... 10%...
Error erasing disk error number (-69888, 0)
A error occurred erasing the disk.
The solution may be actually easier than you think!

If you get Error erasing disk error number (-69888, 0) A error occurred erasing the disk. message when trying to create a bootable USB, make sure the USB drive is not currently used by the system or your apps (think open Finder windows or current directory in Terminal).