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Install Snow Leopard from External Firewire or USB Hard Drive, or How to Upgrade to 10.6 Without a DVD Drive

September 2nd, 2009 - 10.6, How to, Mac OS X, Snow Leopard, Tips & Tricks

Install Snow Leopard from External Drive If you have a Mac without a functioning DVD drive (or a MacBook Air), you’ll need to find another way to upgrade to Snow Leopard, thankfully this is very easy, all you’ll need is an external firewire or USB hard drive. OK so the title might be slightly misleading, you’ll need access to a DVD drive *somewhere* so that you can make a disk image of the Snow Leopard install disk with the Disk Utility tool, but once you have the disc image you won’t need the DVD drive again. What you WILL need the entire time though is an external Firewire or USB drive that you don’t mind formatting, so that you can make the device bootable and upgrade to Snow Leopard from it.

Snow Leopard Install DVD image

As some readers pointed out, this step isn’t required. If you do need to, you can create a DMG file of the Snow Leopard disk, this is very easy.
* Launch Disk Utility
* Select the Snow Leopard DVD within Disk Utility
* Click the “New Image” button at the top
* Name the image and put it somewhere you can find it easily (Desktop)
* Click OK and wait for the image to be created

Easy enough right? Ok so here’s how you create a bootable Snow Leopard installation drive out of your external firewire or USB hard disk.

Install Snow Leopard from an external Firewire or USB drive

* Launch Disk Utility
* Select the External Firewire/USB device that you want to use as the boot drive for the upgrade
* Click “Partition” from the menu options
* Select 1 Partition, then click “Options” below the partition scheme
* Select the top option for “GUID Partition Table” – it MUST be GUID to be bootable!
* Click OK to create the GUID partition (this will reformat the drive, ie: all data is lost)
* Next, click the “Restore” tab within Disk Utility
* Select your newly made Snow Leopard 10.6 Install DVD image and restore this image to the GUID partition you just created OR…
* Alternatively, you can select the Snow Leopard Install DVD and restore directly from the DVD to the GUID partition
* After the restoration is complete, your GUID partition will now be bootable by Mac OS X!
* Reboot the Mac holding down the “Option” key to pull up the boot loader, select the Snow Leopard install drive you just created rather than your default Mac OS hard drive
* Install Snow Leopard as usual!

create bootable mac os x install drive

Posted by: Paul Horowitz

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Comments:

Comments: 25

Comment from 1334
Time: September 2, 2009, 8:22 am

I’m afraid it’s a lot easier than that, simply open disk utility and from there select the restore option of the dvd with the hard drive as destination, et voila, you’re done!

Comment from doobus
Time: September 2, 2009, 9:08 am

I actually tried this, but it told me:

“Could not find any scan information. The source image needs to be imagescanned/scanned for restore”

What should I do?

Comment from doobus
Time: September 2, 2009, 9:08 am

nevermind, found the answer on: http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=6357285

Comment from Chris Wanja
Time: September 2, 2009, 11:42 am

@1334 – you are exactly right. This is so much easier. It may take a little more time, but it may not as well considering the time spent making the DMG file. I have this for my travel hdd (500GB): TimeMachine, 10.5.6 Install, 10.5.6+ OS, 10.6 Install, 10.6+ OS. They are all bootable (minus the TimeMachine). Reinstalling the OS is so much faster than the CD. Being able to defrag off of one of these OS partitions is just as easy – minus the last time when it failed on me.

Pingback from Retail Snow Leopard Installation Guide | Daily Blogged
Time: September 4, 2009, 5:41 pm

[...] 1. For installation, we need a .DMG of the install disc. You can learn how to make one from your Snow Leopard Install DVD here. [...]

Comment from spliffy
Time: September 8, 2009, 8:28 pm

video tutorial
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GOyPRHNGvbY
cheers

Pingback from SL on RunCore SDD Questions.
Time: September 9, 2009, 8:42 am

[...] 16GB. The page below was a great tutorial that shows how to perform the Restore from DVD to USB: Install Snow Leopard from External Firewire or USB Hard Drive, or How to Upgrade to 10.6 Without a D… Also this page was of great help as well: NetbookInstaller 1: USB Installation via Mac | Guides | [...]

Pingback from Snow Leopard « "An engineer believes most problems have solutions."
Time: September 9, 2009, 10:59 pm

[...] Here is a link to a nice tutorial: http://osxdaily.com/2009/09/02/install-snow-leopard-from-external-firewire-or-usb-hard-drive-or-how-... [...]

Pingback from
Time: September 10, 2009, 6:20 pm

[...] [...]

Comment from tds
Time: September 14, 2009, 2:31 am

hi, i have the snow leopard image on an external hd, and installed it over a macos 10.4. problem is that it doesn’t erase and install but simply upgrades, which i don’t want because of clutter. in the install process there is no way to choose the disk utility so i’m really looking for any possible options.

could it be possible to format my mac’s hd before rebooting with the external hd, so it has to do a clean install?

thanks!

Comment from Vicente jorquera
Time: September 14, 2009, 11:38 am

i tried to do it like it says on the post, using my ipod video like an
external hard drive, but when i restart my macbook pro, it does not recognize
the partition with snow leopard on it, and my dvd unit is not working.. so
there is not other way to install it for me.

Comment from Ivan
Time: September 15, 2009, 4:55 am

Can i have my HDD usb drive partitioned in two parts and one of those make it bootable.

Comment from Miguel
Time: September 15, 2009, 5:19 pm

Can I use an iphone to do that partition and install SL?

Comment from Mitch
Time: September 17, 2009, 12:30 am

Hi everyone

I have setup the SL install image on my external hard drive, using the “restore” function of Disk Utility.

Everything looks fine, the disk is partitionned with GUID, it’s bootable, my mac sees it, the content of the disk looks just like the content of the dvd, including the big “X” background.

When starting the install, it starts with saying that there are 45 minutes left, and the blue progress bar goes on… but only after something like 5 minutes. it reboots. Then, it apparently tries to boot from the external hard drive (which it should not if the first phase had gone right), and hangs on the startup screen (apple logo with small progress animation)…. for hours, if I leave it.

Is my disk image ruined ? Is the disk itself damaged maybe ? Ideas ?

Comment from ron desortes
Time: September 23, 2009, 5:07 am

Heys, i’m quite confused about this, but does this show the same thing, albeit in a more straight forward manner? (sorry article author!)…

http://cogito.faii.net/converting-mac-os-x-10-6-snow-leopard-installation-disk-into-a-disk-image-or-a-drive/

Comment from santiago
Time: September 28, 2009, 4:55 pm

I was worried about the mbr or guid because i had to erase a lot of stuff wich didnt want to backup yo switch to guid, so i gave it a try with MBR, and it works like a charm.

Pingback from Install or Upgrade Snow Leopard 10.6 from External Firewire or USB Hard Drive « Le Kevin dot com
Time: October 14, 2009, 12:29 am

[...] http://osxdaily.com/2009/09/02/install-snow-leopard-from-external-firewire-or-usb-hard-drive-or-how-... Share and [...]

Comment from His_wife87
Time: October 22, 2009, 4:09 pm

Because that is how traffic is supposed to work! ,

Comment from siddharth Sharma
Time: November 13, 2009, 7:40 pm

ok so my hard drive already has my backup on it and i am not wanting to format the whole thing. is there a way i can make only the the second partition GUID ?
Help would be appreciated

Comment from Adam
Time: November 17, 2009, 5:51 pm

It wont work
it gives me the message
Could no find any scan info. The source image needs to be imagescanned before it can be restored
Any help is appreciated
Adam

Trackback from sionie’s me2DAY
Time: November 27, 2009, 10:25 am

Lindsey의 …

Install Snow Leopard from External Firewire or USB Hard Drive, or How to Upgrade to 10.6 Without a DVD Drive…

Comment from David
Time: November 28, 2009, 12:55 pm

BECAREFUL WHEN YOU ARE DOING THIS. This is a very risky way of doing this. I have accidentally restored my whole hard drive in 1 second. If you messup one time, you will have your HDD restored. There’s an alternate and safer method, please google around.

Pingback from Happy New Year from OS X Daily! – OS X Daily
Time: January 1, 2010, 1:02 am

[...] Install Snow Leopard from an External Firewire or USB Hard Drive / How to Upgrade to Mac OS X 10.6 w… [...]

Comment from Presto
Time: January 18, 2010, 7:45 am

Here are some points to consider if you still don’t succeed, even with the excellent step-by-step advice of the experts:

Remember that “Macintosh HD” or “My Mac” is NOT your internal hard drive – its only something on the drive. Now, if you try to install osx 10.6 and it says it can’t install on “Macintosh HD”, it probably means you simply have to reformat the DRIVE with the GUID option ticked. The GUID option will appear in Disk Utility ONLY when you choose to reformat the Toshiba or whatever drive. The option is NOT there if you try to reformat “Macintosh HD” because Macintosh Hard Drive is not a hard drive :o

Just before reformatting, don’t forget to check that you really have backed up your disk on the external HD (borrow one if necessary). If you are using Time Machine don’t be afraid if you only see a folder called Backups.backupdb The backup(s) are in there in another folder that might be called “Admin’s Imac” – even if you’re on a MacBook :o

To summarise:
- Macintosh HD” is not a hard drive
- Your MacBook disk backup might be called Imac

Pingback from Installare Snow Leopard senza un lettore dvd | BASIC TRADING MULTIMEDIA
Time: January 19, 2010, 7:15 am

[...] A questo punto seguire al procedura guidata di aggiornamento.La guida originale in inglese [...]

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September 2nd, 2009