stony1205 Posted February 26, 2008 Share Posted February 26, 2008 Because my DVD drive doesn't seem to work with the disks, I was wondering if there was a way to use the ISO image on my external USB HDD instead, similar to how linux users can "burn" an ISO to a USB pen drive and such. Anyone have any idea how to do this? ~ Stony Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
inedible Posted February 26, 2008 Share Posted February 26, 2008 you can write a file to a drive in a unix-like environment using the "dd" command. this would work in linux, or in macos.. the command goes: dd -if /path/to/iso -of /dev/yourdrive Though, what problems are you having "Bun"ing the dvds? That's by far the easiest option. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stony1205 Posted February 26, 2008 Author Share Posted February 26, 2008 I've burned the DVD's properly, my IDE DVD drive won't read them. I get nothing but a blinking cursor. I've posted elsewhere on the forums, but I didn't get any kind of answer. I figure I can bypass my "unfriendly" DVD drive by just using my external HDD to boot the ISO. I actually tried the DD command about 2 hours ago, and it didn't do anything. It said "/dev/sdb1 is a directory" and didn't actually copy anything. I used an ubuntu live cd as I have vista installed right now. If I managed to get dd to work, how would I go about making that bootable? Thanks ~ Stony Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
inedible Posted February 26, 2008 Share Posted February 26, 2008 Hmmm.. Dunno why it would say it's a directory... that hardly makes sense... Are you sure it's /dev/sdb1? Also, are you sure it's not mounted? anyway, if you do manage to dd the iso to your flash drive it should be bootable by default. for what it's worth, if you have another mac, you can use disk utility to do the same thing as dd, I believe. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stony1205 Posted February 26, 2008 Author Share Posted February 26, 2008 My ISO file is stored on my Windows Vista NTFS partition, which is sda1. It even shows up in the partition editor. My external drive is sdb1, and also shows up as a FAT32 in the partition editor. The disks are NOT mounted: ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo dd if=/dev/sda1/Users/Jacob/Documents/Downloads/Leopard-10.5.2-AMD/Leopard-10.5.2-AMD-EFI.iso of=/dev/sdb1 dd: opening `/dev/sda1/Users/Jacob/Documents/Downloads/Leopard-10.5.2-AMD/Leopard-10.5.2-AMD-EFI.iso': Not a directory Any suggestions? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MichielM Posted February 26, 2008 Share Posted February 26, 2008 Yeah, you should mount your /dev/sda1 disk, then locate your iso image for your if= input and then run the command Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
inedible Posted February 26, 2008 Share Posted February 26, 2008 Yeah... you're going to need your windows partition mounted... try: mkdir /mnt/temp mount -t ntfs /dev/sda1 /mnt/temp dd if=/mnt/temp/Users/Jacob/Documents/Downloads/Leopard-10.5.2-AMD/Leopard-10.5.2-AMD-EFI.iso of=/dev/sdb1 I'm not 100% sure it will be bootable off the flash drive just like that, I always wondered why it works like that when it does, since the header info off the dvd, as well as the partition structure etc will all be byte-for-byte copied to the flash drive... but it does, sometimes, work just like that. to be sure, once you've done that, open gparted - which is in the menu somewhere as Disk Manager or Partition Editor or something... and make sure the partition on your flash drive is set as bootable. (I think it's like right click, manage flags, check the one that says active or boot) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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