Install Snow Leopard from External Firewire or USB Hard Drive: How to Upgrade to Mac OS X 10.6 Without a DVD Drive
10.6, How to, Mac OS X, Snow Leopard, Tips & Tricks - September 2nd, 2009 - 38 Comments
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.
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 Mac OS X 10.6 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!
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!
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?
If you get the following message:
“Restore Failure – Could not find any scan information. The source image needs to be scanned for restore.”
All you need to do is verify the disk image by clicking on it, then select “Images” in the menubar and then going to “Scan for Restore”
Do this in Disk Utility and it will verify that the image is capable of being a Restore image. This is just a simple preventative measure so that you don’t restore a drive with an image that isn’t intended to be used as a restore option (like an installer in this case)
nevermind, found the answer on: http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=6357285
@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.
[...] 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. [...]
video tutorial
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GOyPRHNGvbY
cheers
yo this really helps thanks for the vid post, big eye opener,
[...] 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 | [...]
[...] 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-... [...]
[...] [...]
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!
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.
Can i have my HDD usb drive partitioned in two parts and one of those make it bootable.
Can I use an iphone to do that partition and install SL?
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 ?
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/
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.
[...] http://osxdaily.com/2009/09/02/install-snow-leopard-from-external-firewire-or-usb-hard-drive-or-how-... Share and [...]
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
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
[...] Install Snow Leopard from an External Firewire or USB Hard Drive / How to Upgrade to Mac OS X 10.6 w… [...]
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
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
To summarise:
- Macintosh HD” is not a hard drive
- Your MacBook disk backup might be called Imac
[...] A questo punto seguire al procedura guidata di aggiornamento.La guida originale in inglese [...]
More specifically “Macintosh HD” is a volume (partition) on the Hard Disc Drive. The Hard Drive itself can only have one set of disc drivers, no matter how many volumes you create on it. The choice of Apple Partition Map Scheme or Global Unique Identifier (GUID) is decided once for the entire Hard Disk Drive. Intel Macs Boot from GUID and PPC Macs use APMS.
On Intel Macs it is possible to boot from the disk image of Snow Leopard Installer. If the disk image is on an external drive and you launch the installer app within the disk image, then your Mac will attempt to boot from the disk image. Therefore it is not necessary to clone the contents of the Leopard Installer disk image to another drive and run from that.
If you found that your disk image will not boot then perhaps it’s not authentic, perhaps someone tried to download it via windows or use another image tool to create it.
My way of doing this:
I happen to use Mac OSX Server’s Netboot and have every Mac OS X Installer version that I can boot from via my network.
There are ways to setup a netboot server on a client Mac without OS X Server.
i go to the partition tab and select 1 partition but it states that there are “no options available” so i can not select the GUID. so I’m stuck —- help
[...] no avail. Using a PC and an old mac I formatted an external HD according to these instructions: Install Snow Leopard from External Firewire or USB Hard Drive, or How to Upgrade to 10.6 Without a D… and holding down the option key I DO see the external HD but when I click on the little arrow [...]
I see a few others have had tis same problem, but NO ANSWERS here:
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
hobo
@Everyone with problems with GUID and unable to select
you have to select the actual name of the hard drive (listed as manufacturer like Toshiba, Western Digital, etc) not the name of the Mac format partition (Macintosh HD, Time Machine, etc)
Select the actual drive not the partition
I’ve done everything correctly, followed all the instructions, but then… When I try to follow the installation process – selecting the disk to where I want to install it, an error message appears that ‘ This disk is used for Time machine Backups ‘ – Mac OS X couldn’t be installed on this disk.
I was installing it to my HD…
Just to supplement that last comment with – yes I’ve turned off time machine..
this is bugging me..
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i have a mac mini disk with snow leopred installer on it. does this work the same way?
Peter, go into your time machine prefs. and go to ‘change disk.’ delete the drive from the list.
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[...] it was to boot Mac OS from a DVD to reformat and reinstall Mac OS X. Now that it’s so easy to install Mac OS using an external drive though, is having a DVD drive really a good usage of limited hardware real estate on your [...]