applehacker Posted March 26, 2009 Share Posted March 26, 2009 Hi guys. I was tinkering last night, and I found a way to install leopard without a disc, and in about 5 minutes! It will speed up os x installation so quickly, its incredible. Also, its handy for notebooks without disc drives, such has my X41 Tablet, or any netbooks. I hope you will enjoy it! Pre game requirements: A flash drive/hdd with at least 8 gigs of space (Back up your stuff, the drive will be formatted to HFS+) A functional OS X Install (on any machine, just need to have working dvd drive and disk utility) The latest edition of OSx86 tools Some beer Patience The Beef: 1. Plug in your flash drive/external hdd, as well as your favorite distro of OSx86 *NOTE* Make sure you have backed up all your critical data that was on the drive somewhere else! It WILL be formatted! 2. Click on your drive in the left panel, click on partition. 3. Select 1 partition from the drop down menu, and under options, select MBR (Master Boot Record) 4. Click apply, and wait for it to format 5. Now open osx86 tools, and hit the install EFI/fdisk option near the bottom. 6. Select your destination drive after it finishes detecting available drives. 7. Under EFI, you can experiment here: Choose pc_EFI v8 for best results. Chamleon and No-EFI gave me kernel panics, but I guess it can vary according to your hardware. Restart your computer, and check if the drive is bootable (com.apple.boot.plist not found is OK, means its bootable). It should be, and you can move on to the next steps. 8. Reboot into OS X and open disk utility, then click on your distro in the left panel, then click the restore tab. 9. Drag your distro disc icon fromt the left panel to the source path 10. Drag your flash drive PARTITION to the destination path 11. Click Restore (takes about an hour) 12. Profit You should have a working OS X Distro drive. If you get instant reboots, try experimenting with bootloaders listed in step 7. You don't have to repeat all other steps, just step 7. You will notice the boot time/install time is dramatically faster than conventional discs! I got my setup working on my 8 gig flash drive, and boot thru install time took 5 minutes! Enjoy guys! Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/159321-how-to-install-os-x-leopard-from-a-flash-drive/ Share on other sites More sharing options...
saif1229 Posted April 26, 2009 Share Posted April 26, 2009 hahah thats pretty cool thanks.. ill have to do this once i get iPC installed onto my lappy toppity box Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/159321-how-to-install-os-x-leopard-from-a-flash-drive/#findComment-1142377 Share on other sites More sharing options...
iTrooper Posted April 27, 2009 Share Posted April 27, 2009 The hardest part is getting the USB stick to be bootable, once you get past that hump, it's bloody easy work. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/159321-how-to-install-os-x-leopard-from-a-flash-drive/#findComment-1142431 Share on other sites More sharing options...
psyk3 Posted May 5, 2009 Share Posted May 5, 2009 I was trying to do this last night on an 8GB USB flash drive, but I'm very new to OSX... I did pretty much everything you described (twice actually: once formatting the drive as MBR, once as GUID) except for the installation of EFI via OSx86 tools - a pretty important piece of the puzzle. Thank you for the tutorial applehacker, I can't wait to try it! (I will be busy for the next few days but will post my results here). ----aside---- What I also tried to do was setup a dedicated 'install partition' on an internal hardrive from which to re-install OSX, e.g. a hard drive with two partitions: partition1: working OSX installation partition2: OSX DVD image (used disk utility to 'restore' retail install DVD .dmg to this partition) I used the same procedure (twice: MBR, and GUID ) as I was trying for the flash drive, with no success. Actually this seemed to go a bit better because when I would force a boot off the OSX install DVD image partition, I would get a grey screen with a grey apple logo, but eventually it would just throw up the multi-language notice saying to hold the power button for a few seconds to restart. A lot more than the flash drive boot ever did. I wonder if the hard drive scheme I'm aiming for is achievable with your guide? I'll try it out myself, once I have some time. I think it might be a bit more complicated because the flash drive just has one bootable partition whereas the hard drive would have two... ----aside---- Thanks again for the guide! Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/159321-how-to-install-os-x-leopard-from-a-flash-drive/#findComment-1149202 Share on other sites More sharing options...
makrebs Posted May 7, 2009 Share Posted May 7, 2009 Hi guys. I was tinkering last night, and I found a way to install leopard without a disc, and in about 5 minutes! It will speed up os x installation so quickly, its incredible. Also, its handy for notebooks without disc drives, such has my X41 Tablet, or any netbooks. I hope you will enjoy it! Pre game requirements: A flash drive/hdd with at least 8 gigs of space (Back up your stuff, the drive will be formatted to HFS+) A functional OS X Install (on any machine, just need to have working dvd drive and disk utility) The latest edition of OSx86 tools Some beer Patience The Beef: 1. Plug in your flash drive/external hdd, as well as your favorite distro of OSx86 *NOTE* Make sure you have backed up all your critical data that was on the drive somewhere else! It WILL be formatted! 2. Click on your drive in the left panel, click on partition. 3. Select 1 partition from the drop down menu, and under options, select MBR (Master Boot Record) 4. Click apply, and wait for it to format 5. Now open osx86 tools, and hit the install EFI/fdisk option near the bottom. 6. Select your destination drive after it finishes detecting available drives. 7. Under EFI, you can experiment here: Choose pc_EFI v8 for best results. Chamleon and No-EFI gave me kernel panics, but I guess it can vary according to your hardware. Restart your computer, and check if the drive is bootable (com.apple.boot.plist not found is OK, means its bootable). It should be, and you can move on to the next steps. 8. Reboot into OS X and open disk utility, then click on your distro in the left panel, then click the restore tab. 9. Drag your distro disc icon fromt the left panel to the source path 10. Drag your flash drive PARTITION to the destination path 11. Click Restore (takes about an hour) 12. Profit You should have a working OS X Distro drive. If you get instant reboots, try experimenting with bootloaders listed in step 7. You don't have to repeat all other steps, just step 7. You will notice the boot time/install time is dramatically faster than conventional discs! I got my setup working on my 8 gig flash drive, and boot thru install time took 5 minutes! Enjoy guys! Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/159321-how-to-install-os-x-leopard-from-a-flash-drive/#findComment-1150711 Share on other sites More sharing options...
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