- Creating A Bootable Usb Drive For Mac Os X From Windows
- How To Create A Boot Disk For Mac Os X Yosemite
- Creating A Boot Disk For Mac Os X
- Create Mac Boot Disk
It’s been almost two years since I last wrote for Low End Mac, but my love of all things Apple hasn’t waned. Most recently, I’ve become the proud owner of an iPhone 3G, which may finally stop me hunting for an elusive MessagePad 2100 on eBay.
What did interrupt my Classic Mac activities was a number of hard drive issues that required multiple reinstalls of various versions of the Mac OS on different machines. It was more of a hassle than a problem, but it became a serious sticking point once I upgraded to Leopard.
Hp laserjet 1018 drivers for mac os x. Dec 01, 2016 easy way how to create installer boot mac os x dvd disk or usb pendrive under windows - 2018 (link) - duration: 13:11. Bluestacks for mac os x 10.6 8. Channel48 105,743 views. Create Bootable USB for Mac on Windows 10, Mac and Windows file system is completely different, so you are not able to create bootable USB for Mac with PowerShell, CMD or Rufus.If you remembered, till MacOS sierra the Apple file system was Hackintosh, but MacOS 10.13 High Sierra has the technology of Apple Filesystem. That’s why we can’t create bootable USB with Windows tools.
Making Boot Disks
In order to keep our classic Macs alive, we need ready access to boot disks and install disks so that when the need arises they can be recovered. Apple very kindly makes various versions available for free – most notably System 6.0.8 and 7.5.3. You can also find useful items in their archive, such as the 7.5 Network access disk, which allows you to boot into System 7 from a floppy.
Depending on the file format, preparing these boot disk follows various routes, but most of them rely heavily on one of the following three items:
- Disk Copy 6 or Disk Copy 4
- .sea self extracting archives
- .smi self mounting images – often split across multiple files
And herein lies the problem: Multiple .smi files need to be copied to one location – in other words, you should be able to boot the Mac you want to install them on. So before installing the Mac OS from .smi files, you need to make a boot disk using one of the other two methods.
But both Disk Copy and .sea files require the Classic Mac OS. Earlier this year, I found myself with three old Macs, none of which would boot, and a G5 with Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard installed that was seemingly useless for this task without the Classic environment.
Making Boot Disks Using dd
All was not lost due to one simple fact – Mac OS X is a Unix variant, and therefore it has all of the standard Unix tools available. One of these can be used to make boot disks. The dd command can be used to duplicate any disk, and it can be used to take a disk image file and write it to a floppy disk byte by byte. The format of the command’s usage is fairly straightforward:
Where you would replace INPUTFILE with the filename (and path) of the disk image and OUTPUTFILE needs to point to the destination (a floppy disk in our case). At least, it should be that simple, but it isn’t quite. Some extra parameters are needed when dealing with Mac Disk Copy images, because there is some extra information in the header of these files that we want to strip out. The command for creating a Mac boot disk is:
Complications of OS X
This seems simple enough, but you need to know a bit of Unix to get the paths correct. For example, if the image is system7.img and it’s in your home folder, you need to replace INPUTFILE with ~/system7.img. But how do you point OUTPUTFILE to the floppy disk? When Mac OS X mounts a floppy disk called DISKNAME, it creates a location for it at /Volumes/DISKNAME, but if you try to use this with the dd command, you will get an error.
If you have a floppy disk mounted, go to Terminal and type the command df -h. You’ll see your disk listed, but the field of interest is the first column – it will probably say something like /dev/disk1 – and that is the correct value for OUTPUTFILE.
But you’ll hit problems again. If you try to run this, you’ll be told that the device is busy. The trick is to unmount the contents of the floppy disk whilst you still have the disk itself mounted. Sounds confusing? It is – but this is the magic step which seems to be missed from many discussions about using dd.
A Step by Step Guide
After that little tour of the dd command on OS X, here are the step by step instructions for creating a bootable floppy disk from OS X. As ever when using the command line, be careful what you type – it’s all too easy to make mistakes via a typo!
- First up, you need to locate a disk image. If it’s compressed within a .bin or a .hqx file, you’ll need to expand it first (just double click in the Finder). If it’s inside a .smi, you’ll need to mount that disk image first and then work with the actual .img file inside. If it’s in a .sea file, you’ll have to expand it using Stuffit, because Leopard will not open .sea files.
- Next, connect up your USB floppy drive and insert the high density floppy disk you are going to turn into a boot disk (none of the USB floppy drives support the Mac’s old 400K and 800K formats, only the 1.4 MB one). This process will erase anything that is already on the floppy, so be warned!
- Open Disk Utility (it’s in the Utilities folder, which is in the Applications folder). You’ll see the floppy drive on the left hand pane in Disk Utility. Click on the lower level (the piece whose name matches the icon mounted on the desktop) of the floppy and choose Unmount from the toolbar. Once this is done, the name of the volume will be greyed out.
- Select the top level of the floppy disk and click the Info button on the toolbar. Make a note of the ‘disk identifier’, which will be something like ‘disk1’. This determines what you will enter for OUTPUTFILE (if it says disk2, you’ll enter /dev/disk2).
- Quit Disk Utility and launch Terminal.
- At the command line, enter dd if=INPUTFILE of=OUTPUTFILE bs=84 skip=1 and hit Enter. If you are using a file called system7.img and it’s in a folder called Classic within your home folder, and your disk identifier from step 4 was ‘disk2’, then you’ll enter dd if=~/Classic/system7.img of=/dev/disk2 bs=84 skip=1
- Wait for the process to complete in Terminal, then eject the floppy disk and use it to start your old Mac.
The process is a bit fiddly, but you soon get used to it. What it means is that Mac users are no longer reliant on having two working classic Macs at home (so one can be used to help recover the other) – any OS X machine with a USB floppy drive should be up to the task. I’ve managed to Boot Macs into System 6 and 7 this way – and I’ve even made an A/UX boot disk . . . but that’s another article for another day.
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Creating A Bootable Usb Drive For Mac Os X From Windows
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These advanced steps are primarily for system administrators and others who are familiar with the command line. You don't need a bootable installer to upgrade macOS or reinstall macOS, but it can be useful when you want to install on multiple computers without downloading the installer each time.
Download macOS
Find the appropriate download link in the upgrade instructions for each macOS version:
macOS Catalina, macOS MojaveormacOS High Sierra
Installers for each of these macOS versions download directly to your Applications folder as an app named Install macOS Catalina, Install macOS Mojave, or Install macOS High Sierra. If the installer opens after downloading, quit it without continuing installation. Important: To get the correct installer, download from a Mac that is using macOS Sierra 10.12.5 or later, or El Capitan 10.11.6. Enterprise administrators, please download from Apple, not a locally hosted software-update server.
Installers for each of these macOS versions download directly to your Applications folder as an app named Install macOS Catalina, Install macOS Mojave, or Install macOS High Sierra. If the installer opens after downloading, quit it without continuing installation. Important: To get the correct installer, download from a Mac that is using macOS Sierra 10.12.5 or later, or El Capitan 10.11.6. Enterprise administrators, please download from Apple, not a locally hosted software-update server.
OS X El Capitan
El Capitan downloads as a disk image. On a Mac that is compatible with El Capitan, open the disk image and run the installer within, named InstallMacOSX.pkg. It installs an app named Install OS X El Capitan into your Applications folder. You will create the bootable installer from this app, not from the disk image or .pkg installer.
El Capitan downloads as a disk image. On a Mac that is compatible with El Capitan, open the disk image and run the installer within, named InstallMacOSX.pkg. It installs an app named Install OS X El Capitan into your Applications folder. You will create the bootable installer from this app, not from the disk image or .pkg installer.
Use the 'createinstallmedia' command in Terminal
- Connect the USB flash drive or other volume that you're using for the bootable installer. Make sure that it has at least 12GB of available storage and is formatted as Mac OS Extended.
- Open Terminal, which is in the Utilities folder of your Applications folder.
- Type or paste one of the following commands in Terminal. These assume that the installer is still in your Applications folder, and MyVolume is the name of the USB flash drive or other volume you're using. If it has a different name, replace
MyVolume
in these commands with the name of your volume.
Catalina:*
Mojave:*
High Sierra:*
El Capitan: - Press Return after typing the command.
- When prompted, type your administrator password and press Return again. Terminal doesn't show any characters as you type your password.
- When prompted, type
Y
to confirm that you want to erase the volume, then press Return. Terminal shows the progress as the bootable installer is created. - When Terminal says that it's done, the volume will have the same name as the installer you downloaded, such as Install macOS Catalina. You can now quit Terminal and eject the volume.
* If your Mac is using macOS Sierra or earlier, include the
--applicationpath
argument, similar to the way this argument is used in the command for El Capitan.Use the bootable installer
How To Create A Boot Disk For Mac Os X Yosemite
After creating the bootable installer, follow these steps to use it:
Creating A Boot Disk For Mac Os X
- Plug the bootable installer into a compatible Mac.
- Use Startup Manager or Startup Disk preferences to select the bootable installer as the startup disk, then start up from it. Your Mac will start up to macOS Recovery.
Learn about selecting a startup disk, including what to do if your Mac doesn't start up from it. - Choose your language, if prompted.
- A bootable installer doesn't download macOS from the Internet, but it does require the Internet to get information specific to your Mac model, such as firmware updates. If you need to connect to a Wi-Fi network, use the Wi-Fi menu in the menu bar.
- Select Install macOS (or Install OS X) from the Utilities window, then click Continue and follow the onscreen instructions.
Learn more
For more information about the
createinstallmedia
command and the arguments that you can use with it, make sure that the macOS installer is in your Applications folder, then enter this path in Terminal:Catalina:
Create Mac Boot Disk
Mojave:
High Sierra:
El Capitan: