Hi there!

This is a small copy & paste from a post I did at the Aspire One forum for how one can create a USB flash drive to contain the OSX installation DVD. Using this method I have installed OSX on the Acer Aspire One without the need for a USB connected DVD. This will most likely work on other machines that can boot from USB and I wanted to share it here. Maybe you have some kind of guide like this before, but I have spent many hours on "search" and "google" until I found a complete step by step guide. This method is done without the need to have access to any OSX computer.

All in all what you need do is:
- Create a MBR on the USB drive
- Copy the ISO to the USB drive
- Change the "ID" of the USB drive-partition to "AF"

There are several steps you need to execute, and keep extreme caution to the ordering of the steps to fully make this work. I.e. follow the numbered sequence...


Step 1:
Make sure you have all that is needed..
- One Vista (or possibly XP) computer...but I have only tested on Vista.
- One ISO of OSX, in my case I used the "iAtkos v5i"
- USB Flash drive LARGER than the intended OSX-ISO you are using. In my case a 4GB was enough for "iAtkos v5i".
- Download the "Leopard hd install helper v0.3". Google is your friend here... Possibly it exists on these forums also?
- Download "unetbootin-windows-282.exe"...google is your best pal yet again...

Step 2:
Format your USB Flash to FAT32 in Vista. I.e. right-click and format.

Step 3:
Start unetbootin and select "Distribution" to "FreeDOS", version "1.0". Make sure to select your newly formated flash drive, in my case "G:". Hit "OK" to have unetbootin do its thing.
This step is purely done to have a "Mater Boot Record" to be written on your USB drive...

Step 4:
Using Vista explorer, delete all files from your drive, in my case "G:".
Doing this will remove the "FreeDOS" files, but keeping the MBR...which is what we want.

Step 5:
Use the "ddmac.exe" in the "Leopard hd install helper v0.3" tool to "copy all iso stuff" to the new drive. This tool is not in English and a little buggy...but keep "clicking & selecting" until you get the "Start" button to be enabled and you have the correct disk selected.

The following text is taken from an MSI Wind blog (http://blog.binaryfactory.ca/2008/12/insta...om-a-usb-stick/):

QUOTE

In the first field, browse to your previously downloaded OS X Iso.

Select the USB drive as the destination. You will get a warning about the driver, ignore it.

In my case, I unchecked boot.ini – you would leave it if you were running the tool directly on the Wind to install from another partition.

Leave the other checkboxes checked, then click Start (the only button).

Sometimes, start is grayed out. Browse to the ISO, check and uncheck a bunch of stuff and it usually becomes available. Browsing to the ISO, unchecking the "write" box (between the destination pull-down menu and the start button'), choosing the destination and checking Write again seems to be a good combination most of the time.

Once you click start, it will take around 10 minutes, and the progress bar isn't a big help. It helps if your USB Stick has a LED, because the app does not take much CPU and you could think it has died. Be patient, grab a cup of coffee..

Step 6:
When the ddmac.exe has done its thing...now start a command prompt from Vista and start the "diskpart.exe":
- Execute a "list disk" to find your USB drive, then select it with "select disk 2" where "2" was my USB drive...make sure this is correct for your case!
- Then do a "select partition 1" to select the first (and only!) partition on this disk.
- Then do the magic stuff: "set id=af" to make it have correct ID (else it will not work...)
Exit "diskpart" with an "exit".
This step is done to change the partition id to "AF" which is needed for the USB drive to actually boot.

Step 7:
No insert your USB into your computer and reboot it. Make sure to enable booting from USB in your BIOS (or by holding a key like F12 etc down). This step is different depending on the machine you are booting from and hence you need to find out how this works for you.

Have fun and hope it works for you as well!

/Gruffy

Can you post the link to the Aspire One forums.. I would like to see the feedback on this post?

I just purchased a Dell Mini 9 and will be installing OSX. I too do not have a DVD rom drive or another Mac pc to use. I plan to use my Vista Desktop to assist me in my adventures.


I plan to get OSX running and then will purchase a copy of OSX Leopard.



What I do not understand is why the need for all of these tools.

If i am not mistaken diskpart will create a MBR on a usb flash drive...

I am wanting to bet that this may work.
From a Windows XP / Vista PC prepare your USB key so the mini-9 will recognize it and boot whatever is installed on it.

To do this you have to follow the following steps:

On a desktop machine with a DVD Rom drive put in your copy of Windows Vista or in my case Mount a Virtual drive with daemon tools of OSX Leopard

Do a Start --> Run --> CMD
At the command prompt type:
"diskpart" (I think this will work to create the USB MBR)
"list disk" (see if your disk is listed)
"select disk 1" (assuming this is your usb key it could be disk 0 etc)
"clean"
"create partition primary"
"select partition 1"
"active"
"format fs=fat32"
"assign"
"exit"

Now we need to copy the DMG contents to the USB drive Now that the MBR has been setup.

I assume d: DVDROM drive e: is the usb drive

Now xcopy d:\*.* /s/e/f e:\
When that is done simply reboot your mini-9, select 0 for boot options and select USB, your computer will boot and load from the USB key much faster than a DVDROM

Hi there!

First, here is the link to the post in the aspire one forum: Aspire One Forum Post

I am not very good at diskpart, but if what you say here is working then we have another (nicer!) way of doing this. I will see if I get the time to do some small tests on this stuff. I am not sure about the xcopy stuff however...the idea with using the ddmac.exe is to make a "raw copy" from the ISO to the USB key (and thus overwriting the FAT32 tables into HFS). So after the ddmac has been executed, the USB key gets at message (in Windows) that it must be formated to actually work...this is because it now is formated in HFS (rather than FAT32). The FAT32 format above is only done to get a "good looking drive" in Vista so that ddmac can find it.

Anyhow, nice that we can start a discussion about all this. We need a simple way for all the mini-laps that comes without DVD players.

/Gruffy

This is great, I have tried creating a boot disk of msiwindowsx86.iso and it won't boot. This might be a solution but I can't find the (Leopard hd install helper v0.3). Doesn't come up in google or a search for a torrent. Any help would be appreciated.

Ok, duh sorry. I couldn't download the file from here not because it didn't exist but because I hadn't signed up as a member yet.

I know this is going to sound quite noobish, but I have followed all of the steps and I cannot get my image to copy to the usb drive. When I try running Leopard hd install helper, it tells me that the drive needs to be a HFS partition. I'm assuming I'm doing something wrong, but I'm not sure what. Like I said, I followed all of the steps, and I even tried dltv's method, but still nothing.

Thanks for any help you can give me.

Edit: Okay, after randomly messing with Leopard hd install helper, it finally worked. I guess I should have paid more attention to the "buggy" part. Thanks for this guide, I can't wait to try this on my Dell Mini 9 when it arrives tomorrow.

i was really hoping that we could use windows tools and not korean tools to make the usb device.

so xcopy does not work? hmmmm what would the other program do that it doesnt.

I'm not 100% sure that it does not work, just that it did not work for me. Whenever I tried your method, it would only copy the two files that Windows recognizes and not the main installation files. I'm assuming this is because it's formatted for a mac, but I don't know really.

Unfortunately I have not had any time to test with xcopy yet, but as the ddmac.exe is not copying files but rather sectors/blocks from the ISO file my guess is that this will not work. (Se my post above.) The results presented by Cloggerdude also indicates this. Hopefully this Korean/Chineese (?) can help us and release the source for ddmac.exe so that we can create a new english version of it some day...or we have to create our own tool in some way. At least this is a working way to get the install DVD into a bootable USB drive.
/Gruffy

Very nice guide !

Unfortunately, even though I followed it to the letter , I stumpled across an unforseen problem ( that is , other problems than the forseen grey button :-).
After I formatted the USB drive , put FreeDOS on it and removed the files from it I started the little helper.
It took a couple of tries before it finally accepted the iso and gave me the button to write the image.
This is what it said i it's log:

Dump image file to driver,please wait...
Change partition type to AF: not a HFS partition
Load boot1h: not a HFS partition
Load startupfile: not a HFS partition
All done, have fun!

Hmmmm.... HFS partition ? Other format than FAT32 ?

Any ideas ?

/Labbo

download MacDiskgo to preferences check format hsf + when formating.

give it a go

my usb drives will be here this weekend but monday is the soonest ill get my other pc to test this.

anyone get windows to create a osx usb bootable drive?

not working here

I put the pen on my 1000h and select to boot from it, a text appears but it is so fast that K can't read and the GRUB shows to select my operation system...

any help?

I have been able to see what is show when I select the usb to start:

Missing operating system!

what can be wrong?!

no one helps?

hello!

i'm on xp home and diskpart doesn't show my usb key. i just have my HDD, and my external. any issues?

Thanks for the tut!
I was wondering if you or someone could upload the programs needed as I am having trouble finding them, thanks again

The files can be found by searching the names of the files in google.
It's very simple, and I was able to search and download them just now fine.

For example:
Leopard hd install helper v0.3 is just 3 down from the top
http://tinyurl.com/mwldwb

I trust you can find the rest on your own.

Anyone that is getting the "not a HFS partition" error format the USB Drive to NTFS before using the program.

And if you are getting the "drive not empty" error, you should Shift+Delete all Hidden Files and Folders as well as any system files/folders. Including the Recycle Bin!

Hope this helps somone. I might make a more in depth posting later.

Ill be giving this a shot this weekend. Cant wait to play around with a buggy foreign program! Nice tut, btw!

Hi, I tried using ddmac but get the following when I boot from my usb:

H00000050
]-00000052
=00000001
}*!-0077007E
Y

I don't know if that tells you much, but any help is much appreciated.

Just found a solution to this. Leopard helper Does not work with iDeneb v1.4. Have a look at this to get it to work

http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/index.php...mp;#entry782256

Try this Click Here
Tell me if works

seems to be working great thanks for this