Install OS X Snow Leopard from a USB flash drive
The steps below will guide you through how to Install OS X Snow Leopard from a USB Flash Drive. Alternatively, you can also read these instructions on how to install OS X Lion from a USB Flash Drive.
Apple officially released Snow Leopard a couple years ago and consumers can still find the latest version of OS X at Apple Stores and resellers across the country.
At version 10.6, Snow Leopard, focused more on improving speed and performance than adding new features to OS X. With the operating system available to customers, individuals are ready for their upgrades.
Installing OS X From a USB Drive
Like other versions of OS X, Snow Leopard can be installed from a USB drive. This is especially beneficial to Macbook Air users looking to install the OS without a DVD drive. To do this, you’ll need to prepare your USB drive with the installation files. Like many of our other Mac Help articles, the steps listed below worked particularly for Snow Leopard but should also work for installing OS X from USB on Leopard.
The installation files sit at 6.2gb on the Snow Leopard DVD, so you’ll probably need a drive that has at least 8gb available. If you want your installation files to last against the elements, check out this 8 GB Water/Shock Resistant USB flash drive.
After you’ve gotten the correct USB device, connect it to your Mac and prepare it with the Snow Leopard installation files by following these steps:
NOTE:Depending on your flash drive, you may need to follow steps 5 – 7 on installing onto a USB drive to make sure the drive is bootable before you get start. This includes updating the options for the partition so that it is set to a GUID partition. If the USB drive is not bootable you will NOT be able to install from it.
- Open Disk Utility and select the Flash Drive
- Select the Erase tab on the right and then set Format to Mac OS Extended (Journaled). Name the partition you’ll be creating Snow Leopard or OS X Install so you can keep track of your installation device. After you’ve done this, click the Erase button.
- After Disk Utility finishes erasing your old data on the flash drive and setting it as a new partition, it will be ready for the Snow Leopard install files. Select the Restore tab at the top and then drag the Snow Leopard DVD to the Source field. Select your USB device for the Destination file. Click Restore and wait for the restoration to finish (about 20 minutes).
- If the restoration worked correctly you should be able to open your USB device and see the Leopard installation files. If you try and click the Install OS X Snow Leopard icon, you’ll get the message below telling you you can’ install OS X from this volume. IGNORE the message. The next steps will walk you through the installation steps.
- Now that the installation files are successfully on your USB device, be sure to remove the Snow Leopard installation DVD from your drive. Next, restart your Mac and when it first starts to reboot, be sure to hold down the option (alt) key on your keyboard. After a few seconds at least two volumes should appear for you to select from for installation. One of those will be the USB drive we just prepared. Select it.
- After the Snow Leopard installation software boots from your USB drive, follow the on screen instructions for installation. It took about 38 minutes to install Snow Leopard on my machine from the USB drive. I’m curious to see how this compares to the average Mac users, please leave a post in the comments letting us know how long it took on your machine.
- After the installation finishes, it will reboot your computer into your new upgraded version of OS X, version 10.6 Snow Leopard
This method works for installing OS X Snow Leopard onto a Mac from a USB Drive. It should also work for installing Leopard or other older versions of OS X on Intel Based Macs. Check back often for additional help and tips for your Mac.
536 Responses so far.
Mark G
August 20, 2010 at 7:29 amThanks for this,,, My DVD drive has never liked the Snow leopard and after and hour to try and get it to read the disk I gave up. Then I thought surely I can do it from a USB.. Then this guide came up!
Christian
August 23, 2010 at 6:50 pmInstalled from USB drive as per your instruction. Took me 18 minutes for a clean installation onto my Intel 80Gb solid state drive (SSD).
big blue
August 24, 2010 at 1:03 amHi, thanks for the great tutorial.
Can I restore the install disk to a partition on an external hard drive instead of a Flash drive?
ada
August 24, 2010 at 8:42 amHi there–I don't have a big enough USB handy. But, could i possible use a 30GB iPod for this? If the iPod is set to "enable disk use" and therefore basically a big hardrive? Thanks!
Trevor
August 26, 2010 at 6:34 pmFollowed every step (as well as step 5-7 on other guide), using 8gb Sony flash drive, and it still does not show up on the boot menu (when I restart and hold alt/option. Any help please???
Dan
August 26, 2010 at 9:58 pmTrevor – What Mac are you using? Are you using a retail version of the install DVD? Most individuals that have Intel Macs and are using a Retail version have no problems installing this way.
Trevor
August 27, 2010 at 12:35 amI am on a iMac (late 2006) and installing from a retail version of 10.6…
Dan
September 4, 2010 at 1:43 pmDid you follow the steps to set your USB Drive as GUID? Some have said that their particular version of USB drive did not work. I know the SanDisk 8gb Cruzer work.
Mike
September 3, 2010 at 9:42 amI followed every step. When I boot up, however, I only see my HD. I'm using an 8GB crucial USB drive. I've tried it on my 2004-ish macbook with a full retail copy.
mike@aol.co.uk
September 4, 2010 at 8:30 amI had no error message…just gibt the install medium the exact Name "Mac OS X Install DVD". Else: thanks for the startup!
James
September 7, 2010 at 9:21 amdo you ship the pre configured usb drive and dvd internationally.
Dan
September 7, 2010 at 11:18 pmNo, US shipping only.
James
September 8, 2010 at 2:45 amIf you're booting is off a flash drive, is it possible to remove the partition after you're done?
Dan
September 8, 2010 at 10:41 amYes, just erase the drive with Disk Utility after you're finished.
carlos
September 8, 2010 at 7:53 amso will I always need to boot up with my flash drive in if I want to use leopard? I would like to just permanently install it. Im confused by the steps on formating. on the link i'd appreciate any help
Dan
September 8, 2010 at 10:44 amNo, this will just allow you to install Snow Leopard from a USB drive. You can install onto a Flash Drive if you want to boot into a previous version of OS X or something…
carlos
September 8, 2010 at 1:58 pmi'm following steps 5-7. do I actually hit the "partition" button because its telling me all volumes will be lost. do I change the size partition size?
right now its at 7.48
Dan
September 9, 2010 at 12:59 amPartitioning will remove everything on the Flash Drive. You'll only need 1 partition. Once you've partitioned it as a GUID you'll be able to copy onto it the OS X installation files.
carlos
September 9, 2010 at 7:16 amok so I figured out the partition. set to GUID. erased "dvd" from my hard drive. but when I try to restart with the alt key I only get one choice to reboot, my mac HD. did I miss something?
BTW thanks for replying this is really helping me
Dan
September 9, 2010 at 11:56 pmdid you restore the DVD to he USB drive before rebooting?
What brand of USB drive is it? Some have had issues with Sony USB drives. I know Sandisk Cruzer is what I use.
carlos
September 9, 2010 at 7:33 amI just clicked the install dvd from my flash drive and I didn't get the message as described in step #4. instead I got the big (leopard)X w/ a restart button to continue the install process. then it just booted up with tiger.
Dan
September 9, 2010 at 11:57 pmWhich Mac do you have, and is it Intel based?
carlos
September 10, 2010 at 7:06 amwent out and bought a sandisk. I have a macbook pro/ intel 10.4.11
Sharkey
September 16, 2010 at 4:05 amIncredibly FAST!!!! I was able to install Snow Leopard on a 3 year old Macbook Pro (2.4GHZ Intel Core 2 Duo) in 14 minutes FLAT! This is less than half the time it normally takes using a slower processor than my base line testing. A standard install from DVD on my new Core i5 2.5GHz Macbook Pro took me 36 minutes when I ran it 2 weeks ago.
Thank you very much for sharing this info, it was VERY helpful. FYI: Getting this process to work is ALL about the flash drive you choose. I tried this process 8 times unsuccessfully each time running into an error at the end of the "Restore" process (Could not restore – Cannot allocate memory). Then I would get an error during install that the Installer could not find the necessary files. Purchased a new "PNY Attache 8 GB drive" and everything worked FLAWLESSLY!!! Thanks again!
MpData
September 16, 2010 at 9:26 amhi there,
i have been having this problem installing mac osx snow leopard from the dvd that came with my new imac and the message is “the installer failed, setup could not copy all the necessary support files. now i have created an usb flash just in case the dvd is damaged. Anyway now when i try to boot from the usb flash it actually gives me the option to choose as the boot location but after this nothing happens. The apple logo just remains stuck in the screen… Any help please!!!!
ErikN
September 18, 2010 at 1:42 am>This is especially beneficial to Macbook Air
>users looking to install the OS without a DVD drive.
Although the above is true, you still need a DVD drive to get the installation files on the USB Drive… making the above statement lose its weight…
ErikN
September 18, 2010 at 5:05 amNevertheless nice guide. I managed to created an .iso file of the installation DVD on a Windows computer using ImgBurn. I copied the .iso to my Mac Book Air and used this .iso file as restoration source of step 3.
Dan
September 20, 2010 at 4:44 amAshraf, if you're using this on a PC it won't work. This is for Macs only.
Ashraf
September 20, 2010 at 11:37 amHello guys.. i did the same, everything done successfully.. but when i start my PC with Selected Boot from USB, only a cursor blinking on the top left corner. i tried on Sandisk Cruzer 8GB and a new Sandisk Cruzer Blade 8GB. both not booting up.
Serj
September 24, 2010 at 3:27 pmThanx a lot!!!!!!!!!!!! Great faq!!!
Serj
September 24, 2010 at 4:12 pmWhen it's booting it first shows an apple but then the apple turns into a stop sighn is that normal should i wait or reboot??
Manicsheep
September 24, 2010 at 4:26 pmBest damn 40mins of my life! Awesome!!!
Serj
September 24, 2010 at 4:28 pmManicsheep did you get the stop sighn while booting??
Serj
September 25, 2010 at 12:23 amSolved it ))
OXBI
February 19, 2011 at 7:30 pmHow?? I'm trying install this for an hours pal, I'm getting always the same problem that you mention , the stop sign when booting
( please help me as soon as you can at first time That I tried i used an iPhone as USB drive and everything goes fine until I get the stop sign so I bought a 8 gb USB stick and same thing happens I'm freaking out with this….
William
September 26, 2010 at 5:57 pmAbout 40 minutes going from 10.4 to 10.6.
Vladimir
September 27, 2010 at 1:37 amHi there ! thank you a lot for the advice. i went through it and it works perfectly for me. 25 minutes
Justine-Paula
September 29, 2010 at 5:51 amYeah I wonder if you could consider the following for me, I am needing to re-install my OS onto my macbookpro 2,2ghz machine, and it would be so much faster hopefully if there was any way possible to allow me to do this with Final Cut Studio 2? I have legit version, I needed it for work and I bought from the Apple store, but it takes hours to install from the dvd's, wasting a good few hours sitting feeding the laptop disks..
Could it be done so that Final Cut Studio 2 is on a Flash drive, so that I could have it with me should I need it on the road, instead of carrying all the disks???
Dan
September 29, 2010 at 8:33 amI believe you could create USB install disks with the same approach.
Sevi
October 6, 2010 at 1:05 amThanks for the nice instruction!
But I have a problem with the Disk-Utility: I can't neither drag and drop my usb stick (Kingston 3G/8GB) nor the image of my SnowLeopard! Therefore im not able to restore the image to the USB-Flash drive! I'm currently using mac os x 10.4! Any ideas how to solve this problem??
Joseph
October 13, 2010 at 8:36 amHi Everyone! I'm following this process because my optical cd drive doesnt work. I installed Leopard (10.5.1) from original DVD onto 8GB cruzer, but when I boot, it shows [EFI] as the name of the boot device. However, it lets me click and now the wheel below the apple just keeps spinning. Any idea why this happens? I'm installing a fresh install of Leopard, because I got a new hdd of 250GB since my old one went out. Any advice would be great!
Many thanks!
apple repair store n
October 20, 2010 at 10:03 amI got this error: "Could not restore – Cannot allocate memory"
I'm using a 16GB Verbatim flash drive
Saleh
October 20, 2010 at 7:43 pmHi Dan!
Please This very important, and I need your urgent respond.
I'm not that Mac expert, but I have one for my work, I managed to download a retail copy of osx 10.6 from the web, and I made the usb installation disk as you mentioned and it worked just fine, but when it comes to install I have a massege saying "MAC OSX can not be istalled on this computer"
Have you got any Ideas about this!
Dan
October 21, 2010 at 12:11 amSaleh – if you DL a copy it most likely wasn't a Retail version. Are you installing on an Intel Mac? It sounds like you have an image of SL that was built for a different Mac than the one you're trying to install it on. Retail versions of SL will work on all Intel Macs.
Maine
October 22, 2010 at 5:07 amWork great. took 36mins to install it form my usb stick. thanks for the great steps!
davros
October 27, 2010 at 10:10 amcan i use a 250gb external hdd or does it have to be a flash drive?
Simon
October 28, 2010 at 3:27 pmmine took 22 mins using a SanDisk 32 GB MicroSD card using a USB adaptor.
@davros, you can use anything from USB flash drive to a USB dock using a sata/IDE hard drive, aslong as the mac can detect it to drag the cd files, it will work
Dan
October 29, 2010 at 11:10 amAwesome Simon, thanks for sharing!
thx
October 30, 2010 at 3:13 amThis is so much a mac-like solution. Thanks buddy.
Giovani
October 30, 2010 at 6:15 amHi. Here take 25 min – from a pendrive datatraveler kingston 8gb to macbook pro 13" 2gb.
heli
November 1, 2010 at 11:38 pmwow wonderful help it just took me 45 min to completely install i used one partition of my 320 gb external hard disk
William
November 7, 2010 at 8:27 am50 minutes with 1GB on MacBook pro
Niebuhr
November 8, 2010 at 5:11 amEverything went perfect, but when i restart, nothing comes up, i hold ALT and it's just the gray screen.. no harddrive..
– and i know the harddrive works fine.
Dan
November 8, 2010 at 5:15 amtry holding down the option key without the USB drive in and see if it shows your HD. Which USB drive are you using?
Guto Martino
November 9, 2010 at 8:48 amDan, thanks a lot. You saved me.
Got an old mackbook black from 2006 and my dvd drive is probably broken (guess i used it only a couple of time these 4 years)
Cheers from Brazil and thank you so much.
btw took me around 27 minutes using a Sandisk usb. Less than a full simpsons episode.
Karen
November 14, 2010 at 2:38 pm31 minutes Sansdisk onto 07.2009 macbookpro
tweeky
November 15, 2010 at 4:41 amThanks a lot man.. I have decided to make clear installation of snow leopard today.. unfortunately I didnt check the dvd, that was scratched =( your description is awesome and Im on again =)
Fed
November 21, 2010 at 2:34 pmWill i lose the USB device of i do this?
Arman
December 2, 2010 at 12:20 pmGreat article. This only works in intel Mac's (hackintosh's need a bootloader, like iBoot, or any version of Chameleon). Just a heads up to people who are having problems, try this method:
– Plug USB, make sure it's mounted.
– Run Disk Utility
– Drag and drop the Snow Leopard DMG to the left pane of Disk Utility, but make sure it's not mounted
– Select the USB drive in Disk Utility, and click the partitions tab. Select '1' for number of partitions, then click options. Make sure GUID is selected. Perform the partition.
– Click the Restore tab, then drag and drop the source from the DMG on the left pane. Drag and drop the destination USB volume (not the drive) from the left pane. Click restore, and let it do it's thang. It took about 45 minutes for me.
– When it is finished, close disk utility. Open System Preferences, and click Startup Disk. Select your USB drive, and boot off of that. Everything should work out just fine.
Arman
December 2, 2010 at 12:24 pmYou will lose all data on your flash drive if it is 8 GB. If it is greater than 8 GB, leave a partition that is at least 8 GB, and you can transfer all your data to the other. Just make sure that that file system for the snow leopard partition, is Mac OS Journaled Extended, and the USB drive has the GUID partition Scheme.
Lionel
December 3, 2010 at 9:35 amit worked
restoring took about 1hour and the restarting took 38 minutes as well 
Lisa
December 4, 2010 at 2:58 pmHey Dan, thanks for this information! So nice with a step-by-step guide!
Almost everything have worked and I'm running Snow Leopard now!
BUT, the only problem I have is that Quick Look won't work. Neither "cmd"+"y" nor "space" give me the quick look! Do you have any idea how to fix that? Please respond to my e-mail!
Ilian
December 7, 2010 at 3:51 am50 minutes. Followed the steps exactly and no problems
Chris
December 10, 2010 at 3:30 amHi Dan,
I've made a USB Memory stick as described which works fine on a 13" MacBook Pro (2009) but the installer crashes with a Kernel Panic on a 13" MacBook Air (2010).
Presumably the flash memory on this machine is causing the issue?
It would be great to have a "universal" installer.
Dan
December 10, 2010 at 9:28 amThe new 13inch MacBook Air (2010) come with a USB installer. I'm guessing its built specifically for that computer.
Have you tried that?
@chrispar
December 10, 2010 at 10:51 amYes, the unique MBA USB Installer works fine. Just wondering if your technique could be adapted to work on all Intel Macs, including the 2010 MBA.
stefan
December 12, 2010 at 9:32 amHello, i does everything that u name. And i can see the usb on the descop and when i click it i can see the menu and all. But when i restart the computer ant hold down ALT i just dont get the usb there.
Im using an Mini mac G4
Dan
December 12, 2010 at 9:40 amStefan – As I explained this only works for Intel Macs. Snow Leopard will not work on a G4. Sorry.
Graeme P
January 3, 2011 at 9:18 pmHi Stefan,
you can get this to work for your G4 but you have to use an external Firewire Hard drive – definitely won't work using USB – that's for Intel only.
lolwat
December 26, 2010 at 2:34 pm30min.. Tnx man!
Kesh
January 11, 2011 at 11:27 amWorked perfect – followed the simple steps and I'm happily now using Snow Leopard
Thanks again
Julie
January 14, 2011 at 12:37 pmThank you!
It worked flawlessly, easy to follow instructions.
Sébastien Leclerc
January 19, 2011 at 4:18 pmTried this on my early 17" intel Imac and it worked perfectly. I tried the same on two 17" aluminum Imacs and couldn't get neither of them to see the USB stick at boot. Both USB sticks were created from those computers and I also tried a mix but nothing worked.
Any ideas?
Dan
January 19, 2011 at 5:45 pmNot sure what the problem is. The process works on my less than a year old 27inch iMac.
Does the USB drive mount when you plug it into the computer and already booted into OS X?
Sébastien Leclerc
January 19, 2011 at 7:15 pmYes it works as it should when booted. I can even see it in the Startup Disk panel and select it but it doesn't boot on the USB, it goes straight to the hard drive.
Daniel
January 22, 2011 at 5:56 pmexcuse my ignorance in this matter, if I use a flash drive to install snow leopard will I be able to use it later on as a normal flash drive or will I be stuck with a useless 16gb flash drive without being able to store stuff in it?
sdaqat@o2.co.uk
January 26, 2011 at 5:53 amThank you for helping me
verlyntae@yahoo.com
January 30, 2011 at 9:27 amHi. I have been attempting to install Snow Leopard on a pre-unibody 15" Alum Intel Mac- with a brand new, clean hard drive- by booting from an external USB Hard drive formmatted w. Snow Leopard.
The checked the USB hard drive before trying to boot and it was properly restored with the SL OS.
The problem is that everytime I try to install the OS, or boot from the USB HD with the ALT/OPTION key held down, the SL Hard Drive appears and after I initiate the installation of the OS, the installation process times out, laptop screen goes blank as if the computer has turned off. What am I doing wrong?
Ryan
March 12, 2011 at 10:50 pmIf the screen goes black, there are reports that it's because Macs will shut off the backlight for some random reason when trying to install from unauthorized media. Try shining a flashlight on the screen. (If my assumption is correct) You should be able to see at least something on your screen and be able to initialize the installation.
Bjarte
February 2, 2011 at 12:55 pmIs it possible to make this from an Windows enviroment? I have a new retail and cant get it to work. My DVD is broken, and I have a new harddrive installed.
I see that you can make it for me but I dont want to buy one more.
Rob
February 4, 2011 at 4:18 pmI got the USB to work by following all the steps, when i boot up my mac and hold 'alt option' i can choose my USB stick as an option but once i select it i get stuck with the apple logo on a white screen as if it's starting up osx but it just stays on this screen forever, i've left it for like 20 mins, nothing happens after.
any ideas?
Rob
February 4, 2011 at 8:55 pmif anyone else is having this problem, i had to partition the USB i was using to GUID and then it booted and worked fine!
arjan
February 8, 2011 at 1:42 pmThis is very helpfull since my internal cd player stopped working, so booting from a usb stick was the only solution. It worked perfectly..Thanx a lot!
jzou2000
February 11, 2011 at 9:41 amHi Dan,
I have an aluminum Intel iMac (mid-2007 20") running OSX tiger. Everything goes fine on it except most applications today require leopard or even snow leopard, so I decide to upgrade to snow leopard.
After backup all of my data (I like a fresh installation), I followed the instructions in this post and restored a MacBookPro Snow Leopard DVD image to a 16GB flash drive (the restoration took 80 minutes, I wonder why it takes so long, anyway). The problem is, after I succeeded to boot from the flash drive, the installation program simply told me "You can not install Snow Leopard on this machine". The only two choices are "restore from time machine" and "restart".
My questions are:
1. Do I have to start with a "generic" DVD/image? Isn't the DVD that comes with a MacBookPro or MacMini the same with the one sold in an Apple Store?
2. Or, should I wipe the internal HD before installation?
3. Or, do I have to buy a box-set to upgrade (even I want a fresh installation and I am not interested in iLife11 nor iWork)? Boy, that would be a hundred and thirty bucks.
Thanks a lot!
Dan
February 11, 2011 at 9:45 amYou can't use a DVD for a different Mac to install snow leopard. It has to be either retail copy or the DVD that matches your model Mac.
jzou2000
February 14, 2011 at 11:24 amThank you for your quick reply. (But I can't because I have to get some results)
I did some other homework and people said the box-set was not necessary for OS upgrade only. So I bought a retail copy of snow leopard from the apple store. Wiping my previous Tiger, I installed snow leopard without any problems.
As expected, the retail copy does not contain iLife'11. Not a big issue though, I didn't pay it anyway. I can still install iLife'08 from the DVD came with my machine.
One thing I observed (and I still don't understand): restoring to a 16GB usb drive takes about 80 minutes (not 30 minutes as other people report). The drive it self is not that slow (the write speed is around 10-30MBps on windows7). Is it because 16GB drive (not 8GB like others)?
peppino
February 14, 2011 at 4:49 pmThat worked great, thanks but it took 44 minutes MacBook 1.1 2 GHz Core Duo Memory:2 GB
OxBI
February 19, 2011 at 7:35 pmHow?? I'm trying install this for an hours pal, I'm getting always the same problem , the stop sign when booting
( please help me as soon as you can at first time That I tried i used an iPhone as USB drive and everything goes fine until I get the stop sign so I bought a 8 gb USB stick and same thing happens I'm freaking out with this….my computer it's a MacBook pro 2,4 ghz ,2 gb ram,with 10.5.8 osx , thanks
john
September 27, 2011 at 3:32 pmsame thing here..
seemyv@live.com
February 27, 2011 at 7:53 amHi can someone help me clean install Mac os X 10.6.4 onto my macbook pro.. it's about 3 years old..
when i tried to upgrade from 10.4.11 to 10.6.4.. it says cannot open or something.. then i deleted everything – someone said to format the drive in GUID not master boot record..
now i have nothing on my laptop but just a 10.6.4 dvd.. what to do??
thanks
bsmart
February 28, 2011 at 10:03 amthanks for the guide. both my super drives are dead in my mac pro, but I happened to have 10.6.3 retail in a .dmg format.
Tony
February 28, 2011 at 2:20 pmwill this work on a power mac g4
mac_n00b
March 4, 2011 at 9:29 pmYou need to trcik your g4 into telling the installation app that your processor is higher than 867Mhz – or it'll fail.
http://lowendmac.com/osx/leopard/openfirmware.htm… gives you a step by step guide on how to do it – as long as you type everything EXACTLY as described.
n8ofva@yahoo.com
March 9, 2011 at 1:25 ami did everything as said but it says that since its removable media it gives me an apple or pc choice under options….although this was a difference when i check the info it still says that my external is bootable…on top of that i get the "volume can't be use" message but my disc wont show up in startup or when i hold alt….it still opens the same way as the boot disk and operate the same i just cant see to boot it from my external HD….what am i doing wrong??? please help i've been doing this for like a freaking week now lol
dan
March 9, 2011 at 7:14 amNeed more information. Which Mac are you trying to install this on? Did you set the HD to GUID during the partitioning process?
Ryan
March 12, 2011 at 10:44 pmI have a couple questions about the procedure:
1) I'm doing this to upgrade an eMac from 10.4.11 to 10.5. The eMac has a 1.25 GHz PowerPC CPU, and a ComboDrive that doesn't read DL DVD's. Will this process still work? I assume that the USB drive will need to be formatted with an Apple Partition Map instead of the GUID table, since it's not an Intel Mac.
2) Is it possible to strip down the install files to less than 4GB? I'd like to be able to use a 4GB pendrive I have lying around. If not, I'm fine with using this as an excuse to upgrade to an 8GB stick. I know that the Xcode tools, language files, and oodles of random printer drivers can be omitted safely (supposedly). Just wondering if there's anything else that can be.
3) If I do omit things like in question #2, is it possible to install them later (specifically, the Xcode tools)?
Thanks,
Ryan
Dan
March 13, 2011 at 10:25 amThis does not work on PowerPC Macs. Instructions are for INTEL only.
Hattan Alwafi
March 13, 2011 at 3:43 pmAfter installing OS X with the very slow progress and it took two hours while the remaining time was 28 minutes it gives me an error
now i can't find the drive that i installed mac into it and i tried booting again from the usb and using disk utility i formatted the drive and reinstalled the Mac and got the same problem.
please help…
Tomas Alf Landberg
March 16, 2011 at 9:28 pmThank you! This worked flawlessly. I steped onto a minor road bump as I thought my drive allready was formated HFS+. But once I realized that i wasn't I just formated it and it installed perfectly! +1 internet to you good sir
Tiffanysandler
March 17, 2011 at 10:59 amHi, thx for the manual. I had exactly 38 minuts too, to install Snow Leopard on my Macbook Air 1.1.
Sean
March 17, 2011 at 10:41 pmI tried to do the same thing for Leopard 10.5 on a Power PC G5 and there is no USB Option available, what do I do?
Firefly
March 19, 2011 at 6:20 pmI have a question. I am trying to reinstall tiger on a 2007 Macbook using the install disks dmg files. I followed the instructions for disk 1, and it worked, but in order to install the bundled software, it pauses in the middle of installation and asks me for "Mac OS X install disc 2". I am using an 80 GB external HD to restore onto. Can I restore both Disk 1 & 2 on the External HD and install that way? Will the installer be able to find the data on the HD? Any suggestions/thoughts? The DVD drive has problems on the Macbook, which is why I am using DMG files. Thank you.
xcalibur7th
March 24, 2011 at 3:43 amHi Dan,
Your post is good, easy and nice to understand. I manage to do it. I did another tutorial, but with some add up.
http://www.atrashids.com/tips-guides-on-installin…
Seregy
April 1, 2011 at 5:45 amHi everyone, it is a nice guide, but i had to do it from my USB so the process was a bit different all thought along the lines. I meet another problem after i updated my Mac OS X from 10.5.8 to 10.6.3 and get all free software upgrade witch gave me in results 10.6.7 i could not get my 8Gb flash card cleaned up. Disk utility would not unmount the USB in order to erase it. So now my Mac see my flash card as an Mac OS X Snow Leopard DVD
) please any thought how to erase everything from it? In the process i had to of course change it from FAT to Mac OS extended so i would like to change that back as well so i can use card both on Mac and PC. thank you
Ccc
April 11, 2011 at 1:42 pmFor information and comparison purposes: I'm currently reinstalling from the DVD (though doing this for a Mac OSX Server 10.6), on a Mac Mini, with a SuperDrive. It's been lagging for two hours. A pain in the… Should have read your tuto earlier.
Cheers
Nathan
April 12, 2011 at 8:44 pmAdding to the "screen turning off" problem, it's definitely not just the backlight. My MacBook pro completely shuts down after 5 min of apple logo and spinner. I did the proper GUID partition and both alt and default startup disk methods to boot. Any help?
JPO
April 17, 2011 at 2:13 amThanks, worked great on my side. Used a .dmg file and 8GB Adata USB drive on a MBA late 2008 model.
JPO
April 17, 2011 at 2:14 amPS, it took 39 Mintues for the installation
Pierre
April 17, 2011 at 8:40 pmWorked Great! The only thing that took time was formatting my HDD for a clean install, other than that, entire process took 20 mins on a 15" core 2 duo 2.8GHz MBP! Thanks a lot for this tutorial!
Pierre
April 18, 2011 at 10:08 amFor all of you, who like me, couldn't get the USB drive to be read back on their Windows machines, just put the USB drive back in the Mac, go to disk utilities -> partition, select 1 partition, and go to options, select master boot, and in the drop down list at the top, put in MS DOS Fat, and click apply, and voila!
and FYI, this tutorial is awesome.