[Guide] SL on your x58 computer using disk restoring

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Brief guide to how I installed SL onto my computer using only the x58 mobo patch installer script by digital_dreamer (thanks for making a great script) and a Snow Leopard retail DVD.

 

You'll also need a separate OS X install somewhere (in my case a MacBook, but some other OSX86 install will probably do good)

 

This is my hardware setup:

Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD5

CPU: Intel Core i7 920 @ 2,66Ghz

RAM: Mushkin DDR3 6GB extreme Performance (XP3-16000 3x2048MB 2000Mhz)

Graphics: ASUS Radeon HD4870 1024MB GDDR5 PCIe 2.0

HDD: Hitachi Deskstar 7K1000.B 1TB SATA2

 

I had to do some trying and failing at first, but at last I managed to do the trick, this is how I did it right quick:

 

1. Get a Snow Leopard retail DVD. I've got the Snow Leopard Box set; this contains what you need (an image file of SL) and stuff you don't need, but which is nice (iWorks and iLife).

 

2. I made a small partition (~10 GB) on my MacBook HD which you have to format using Mac OS Extended (of course), and (more important) with the GUID partition table (press options in Disk Utility.

 

3. Download the script from this guide: http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=185097 (see first post). You'll only need the "X58 Mobo Patcher" which is hyperlinked in the first post.

 

4. Now use digital_dreamer's guide (still first post) and follow the steps. The script is very self-explanatory, but use the guided steps in the forum post to make sure you're on the right track. I chose th EFI-boot manager. At one point you have to either insert the retail SL DVD that you burned (you'll need dual layer DVD for this) OR easily mount the image using disk mounter or Toast. Be certain not to run the setup option that changes your DSDT, unless it's the same computer that you'll actually use for SL later on.

 

5. Hopefully everything installed. At this point I shifted the Macbook HD (search Google for how to open and remove), which is a standard S-ATA over to my target computer (x58 mobo) and booted from the partition on the Macbook HD that I just installed SL to. Make sure you don't forget to tweak your BIOS as instructed in digital_dreamer's guide.

 

6. If it boots into the system and everything looks good, launch Disk Utility. You should see the HDs installed in the computer as well as the MacBook HD. Partition the computer HD as you like (again, using MacOS Extended file system and GUID Partition manager). Now click "Restore" and simply drag the MacBook partition containing your SL install to "source" and the target partition that you just made to "target". Flick the "erase" switch (I did).

It starts copying everything, takes only a few minutes, depending on your HD speed.

 

7. Launch up the x58 mobo patch installer again, only this time use the newly restored (computer HD) partition as target device. Run the "install bootloader", "make active" and "patch DSDT" options.

 

8. Shut down, unlink macbook HD, and boot up hoping this will work.

 

Encountered problems; at first, whenever I booted up the kernel paniced after a couple of minutes. I fixed this in BIOS by setting my system memory multiplier to 14x and performance enhance to standard instead of turbo. This adjusted my memory frequency to ~1800 MHz which is closer to the real value (my memory is capable of 2000 MHz)

 

I recently updated to 10.6.1 as well, no issues.

Good luck!