Making a USB Key Bootable in OS X
 

Apologies if this is in the wrong forum first of all.


I was just wondering if anyone knows how to (or software that might help) make a USB thumb drive bootable, from OS X.

For example, I wish to put a bootable ISO onto the USB stick and then use it to boot from on a PC.

I have tired restoring the ISO to the USB stick from Disk Utility, but with no avail.

Any help would be appriciated,

Thomas

On an Intel Mac? Or an a PPC Mac?

Edit:
You wrote:
Do you mean you want to boot a bootable ISO onto the USB stick on a Mac, and then use it to boot from on a non-Apple PC?

Trevor

Firstly, thanks for the reply.

An Intel Mac, Macbook.

The final aim is to be able to boot a linux Distro, from the USB stick.


So I want to write the .iso to the USB stick from within OS X, so that a PC will see the drive as bootable, and boot from it.

Thomas

So that a non-Mac will see the USB thumb drive as bootable? (Unfortunately, some people use "PC" to mean a non-Mac x86 computer, others use it generically to mean any personal computer no matter what operating system. So it's still not clear what exactly you mean by "PC".)

I'm still not following why you are trying to boot a non-Mac from a thumb drive written to from a Mac. Can you explain further?

Trevor

I know that some most linux distributions can be downloaded on a bootable CD. I have no idea what would be needed to transfer this to a thumbdrive.

Yes, I'm trying to get a non mac to see the USB stick as bootable, and then boot into an OS.

Im trying to do this to test operating systems, but as OS X is my primary OS, I would like to be able to make the USB stick bootable from within OS X.

Yes, I know. But I'm trying to do it from the USB stick, rather than a CD. After all, the .iso's you can download are bootable, so I would think it would just be a case of copying to the files to the USB stick... but it isn't.

Creating a Bootable USB Thumbdrive from .ISO file
 

Hi,

I was trying to do exactly the same thing and i did this in order to create my TD from an .ISO file.

In TERMINAL:

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
$ mount
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

(you will get a list of volumes that are mounted, you will be looking for your thumb drive, yours might look something like this)
/dev/disk1s1 on /Volumes/UNTITLED (local, nodev, nosuid)

In my case the TD was "/dev/disk1s1" so i'm going to use this for the terminal commands in this example.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
$ diskutil umountDisk /dev/disk1
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Note that the unmount function needs to be typed UMOUNT (the N is missing). also note that although my TD was "/dev/disk1s1" when i do the umount command it is just typed as "/dev/disk1" it needs to be typed this way.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
$ dd if=(your .iso) of=/dev/disk1 bs=1m
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For people like me that are new to terminal you can actually drag and drop the .iso file on the terminal window once you're at the point where you need to enter in the path for your .iso

If you have and LED indicator on your TD at this point you should see it flashing/indicating that it is in use. Once it has finished you should see an output similar to this:

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
681+1 records in
681+1 records out
714407936 bytes transferred in 2236.533110 secs (319426 bytes/sec)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

If you wish to view the original page i got this from it is here. http://wiki.awkwardtv.org/wiki/Booti...USB_Thumbdrive

However, I don't believe this will boot in a Mac, right? I was looking for the same thing; boot a Mac from a USB drive.

To boot a Mac from a USB thumb drive, into MacOS X?

Is there any reason it should matter at all that it is, specifically, a thumb drive? I would think generic instrux for booting OS X from a USB external drive would apply to any USB volume, wouldn't it? Erase it, Format it HFS+, install OS X. What (if anything) am I missing here?

I dunno about putting Linux or other nonOSX operating system on, but again I'd think the procedure would be identical to sticking Linux et al onto an external USB hard disk (?); either open firmware (PPC) or EFI (Intel) would have to "see" it as a bootable volume...dunno if Startup Disk PrefsPane would also "see" it...

I have a Patriot XT stick that the OS X install disc will see and allow you to install if you like. I have an emergency bootable drive using this method. NOT practical for everyday use.

Also, you can use CarbonCopy Clone to achieve the same results.

As far as writing iso files to anything other than optical media, dd is the only thing I've seen successful, although only in linux or windows (dd.exe, the method is similar to this). I have never got dd in mac to do what it was I was hoping for, whether it's making an iso from a disc or writing an iso to a disc. Good thing Disk utility is pretty good.

I've never looking into it much, but i've created a bootable USB Flash drive some time ago. I've found that, for my black MacBook (of likely any intel based Mac) one has to partition the USB drive first AND explicitly configure Disk Utility to create an GUID partition map instead of a MBR (Master Boot Record) or Apple Partition Map. You can set this using the 'Options...' button on the Partition tab in Disk Utility.

[speculation]
Afaik you won't be able to use an GUID partitioned drive to boot an ordinary PC with, say, Ubuntu as that might require de MBR Partition map. (apart from the question whether Ubuntu is installable / bootable from a GUID partitioned drive)
[/speculation]

Fedora 13 on MacBookPro
 

Sorry for bringing this old post back up but I am trying to get Fedora installed on my old MacBookPro (intel C2D 2.2 GHz) and I am running into trouble.
My mac's optical drive will not read the Boot DVD iso I have downloaded from Fedora and burned with DiskUtility to a DVD. Other macs with a working optical drive do read and boot from this DVD.
I am trying to make an external hard drive bootable with the content of the iso from fedora with no success.
I tried
That creates a partition on the drive formatted as iso 9660 but boot manager (the one you get when you holt option key while turning your mac on) does not see anything other than the internal drive (which has Snow Leopard installed).
I am not trying to have both OS X and Fedora, I prefer to boot externally, format the internal drive and run a clean installation of Fedora.
any suggestions?

I have tried installing rEFIt but the external drive does not show up on that menu either.

have you tried burning a Fedora boot DVD at the slowest possible speed? If you are lucky, it will work with your Mac's optical drive.

Do you know about VirtualBox? It allows Fedora to run in a window on your Mac, and it's free.

Hum, interesting idea - burning at the slowest speed.
About Virtualization software, I am well familiar with most of them and I run one of the on my current MacBookPro i7 but as I said, . I want to run it natively.

puzzled
 

If you are trying to boot an Intel Mac into OS X from a thumb drive, SD card, &c, be sure to partition the flash drive/card as GPT, and choose HFS+ or HFS+j for the format. Install or clone the OS.

If you are trying to boot an Intel Mac into Ubuntu or some other Linux distro, you perhaps want to consult http://help.ubuntu.com/community/ or an equivalent forum for the flavor of Linux that interests you.

Bios Settings
 

You should be able to go into your bios and set that USB drive as bootable as well as set it in the boot lineup.

No Mac has a BIOS.
It does have a built-in boot manager, which will let you choose a Windows EFI boot, in addition to any bootable OS X partition that the hardware will support. Other OSes, such as Linux distros may need an additional boot utility, such as rEFIt.

Tried this with Tiger on an old clamshell, and it wasn't that hard--though it took hours! Set the permissions on the drive, and the owners to the right settings and make sure it's formatted Mac OS Extended (Journaled). Uncheck the OS 9 disk driver unless you really need it.

Then, go to the Resotre tab. Drag the partition you want to restore and the one you want to write to. Uncheck to erase and check skip checksum (if not already by default). Click Restore. On old Macs, in like three hours, you'll have a working copy of OS X. Just reboot with the option key and select your flash drive.

So, while this won't work on all G3/G4 Macs, if you have one, this might work for you.

@Fastfwd: Under OS X (which is very like Linux in my opinion), go ahead and use Disk Utility under your Utilities folder. Under Terminal (the OS X shell) since you're a Linux guy, type open /Applications/Utilities/Disk\ Utility.app and select the Restore tab. You can drag and drop the drives to restore as you wish. Do yourself a big favor and quit Linux and use OS X! :)

Can you copy PowerPC apps to Intel ?
 

This may be unrelated, but I am upgrading from G5 Quad w/OS Tiger to Intel (probably Snow Leopard). Can you simply format a drive, install Snow Leopard, and then copy your applications etc to the new drive, or do you need to use installers?

Is Snow Leopard the same structure as Tiger, with library, preferences folders etc?

If you replace your G5 with an Intel Mac that has Snow Leopard installed, then you don't need to figure out where everything goes.
Let your Mac decide what needs to be copied from the old system. That's what the Migration assistant is designed to do.
When you first start your new Mac, you will see one of the first few screens ask if you want to transfer files and apps from another Mac - so just follow the on-screen directions. You will need a Firewire cable to connect the two Macs.

Hello,

i have a powerpc mac (imac g4 flat panel) and i would like to boot from a usb stick on it to reinstall mac os x leopard (10.5).

i know i have to do something in the open firmware but this part of the job i know how to do it. i wondered if i have to do a special format for the usb key or just copy the files from the iso to the usb stick.

i'll do it from a pc. is that possible ? do i have to do something special or just copy the files ?

You can use the migration assistant built into the Mac OS setup assistant to migrate from an old mac. It will instruct you in putting your old mac into target disk mode, and plugging the two in via firewire. You can choose whether to migrate just the user folder, or the applications, and settings as well.

This typically works well, as long as your old drive doesn't have formatting, permissions, or directory issues. It is recommended that you run Disk Utility's first aid: repair permissions, and repair disk. Also, if you have a copy of Disk Warrior, run this, as it will fix any directory issues that the OS uses to find files. Run both of these on the old computer's drive before attempting to use Migration Assistant, and the process will generally go smoother.

The issue with Snow Leopard (which is understandable, IMHO), is that they've finally cut support for some seriously old libraries. Which means, that you'll have to download Rosetta when prompted by the OS if you try to open an old third party application. The main OS applications are typically replaced by their snow leopard version if their is one. Rosetta tries to run the older applications, acting as a translator for the old libraries required for the software to run.

If you figure that they coded an operating system to run on two different processor types, using different machine languages (RISC on PPC, and SISC on Intel) for both 10.4, and 10.5... it is understandable that they're finally cutting support for ancient software libraries. During the same time period, Microsoft came out with Vista... *crickets chirping*

Any software developer using Apple's Xcode developer tools (and all / any major programmers should have been at least aware of this) was prompted to start converting their applications to use Cocoa (Objective C) libraries, instead of Carbon (the old OS9 throwback libraries, designed for minimal software rewriting as of Mac OS 10.0, Cheetah). They haven't officially cut support for a lot of that stuff until 10.6... 7 operating systems later. They gave application developers plenty of time to convert. A lot of the major ones didn't because they tend to want to do the minimal amount of rewriting, to make the most profit. Apple made it pretty clear that they would eventually cut support for the OS 9 libraries.

Snow Leopard was a bridge, to provide the end users some functionality while the developers worked on updating the code they should have updated years ago. For those end users using unsupported, unmaintained applications, it gives them time to find alternatives and incorporate them into their workflow.

Lion finally cut support for Rosetta, thus cutting support for 11 year old operating system libraries. I can't say I wish it hadn't happened. If I was actively developing software, I would have updated it long ago. If I was using software that hadn't been updated in that long, I would make sure to find newer equivalents. I am currently running Adobe CS3 in Lion, no problems... so it's not like you have to buy the current version of all software.

If Apple hadn't forced the whole system to change, we would still be running some updated version of OS 9. Sorry, but no thanks. I love OS X, and it really came into itself in 10.3. I love that we have a terminal, and that developers have more reasons to develop for the Mac. I wish some developers that were avid Mac OS Classic developers were still persevering with their efforts in OS X.

I think it's likely that most starting now will be able to continue into the future, as the market has grown. Hopefully, it will only continue, as more web standards take over and more day-to-day functions are performed through a browser. The less people are forced to use Windows, the better. If anyone has a truly rebellious spirit and doesn't wish to use a commercial OS, I heartily recommend researching the many different flavors (distros) of Linux. It has most of the benefits of a mac, without the hardware / license limitations.

Hope someone comes out with a step by step of this. From what I understand, Slax almost does the trick, but the boot script you have to use to make it bootable after unpacking the tar ball to a USB won't run in Lion. :/ Not sure if it will boot a mac after making it bootable, because you would have to hold down option to invoke the apple boot loader, then run the linux boot loader off the USB... will post if I am successful.