How Can I burn The MAC OS X distro to USB flash memory

nfoav8or, thanks for reply.

how can I sure or do bootlader to make the partition on your flash drive.

I DONT mean that I want to run OSX on flash memory.

I mean that I want to run DVD such as kalyway on flash memory.
instead of DVD , I will plug Flash memory and I will start installation.

can you say how can I do this with Which Steps?

I created blank image(DMG) with diskutility. because , diskutility says there is no index etc for iso. after creating DMG and restore the dmg from iso. it takes less time to restore the USB from DMG.

I didnt have time to try , but I will give information about it.

I have question in my mind, i will try this with SB700 Chipset and sometimes , some distros waits to recognize USB and sometimes it can cause problem and it does not recognize and just stop.

I will give you feedback related to USB booting for Distros.

Thanks nfoav8or

yes it is booting but it does not see the IDE HDD, it just see itself as HDD.

how can I achieve this? I didnt install chameleon to USB memory , but it boots;)

ohh no , I was writing the message then I looked the PC and I saw that the MAC osx started:)

yes it is working on USB stick , I didnt do anything.

just use USB stcik:) I am shocked;)

I am lookin drivers which one is recognized

it is working perfect even faster than SATA HDD:)

yeah i cant believe that! someone says what is happening!
it is just kingston USB memory 4GB and restoring from DMG took 2 hours but running OSX takes seconds!

nfoav8or, can you help me?

my USB memory after reboot just only see itself as a HDD.

I can only see USB memory name on booting option as HDD.

I cant see my HDD and it cant see while booting.

I want to say mistake from my previous post:)

I forgot the HDD which is installed OSX because of this , I started to think , it working on USB memory stick , it was really funy! I laugh A lot!

yeah , that's a shame:)

the problem still exists how can I see HDD from USB memory?

I will start new installation process, I need to re-arrange the things.
than I will clarify some other things.

did you look at my other post? related to multiple mkext file option?

just make sure you enable a bootloader such as chameleon or EFI to make the partition on your flash drive.

Boot up normally into OS X and then run Disk Utility. Either insert the DVD or find the .iso you used to write the DVD (the .iso is faster) and select the flash drive on the left. Then select Restore on the top tab and place the respective items in the Source and Destination fields. This will take a while so sit back and read a book or browse the web. When its done, close Disk Utility and open the Chameleon installer ... and select your USB drive as the installation destination and it should work.

I'm realy interested with such a solution ! So if you have any feedback, please post

By using disk utility to do a simple "restore" to my flash disk from the Install DVD file stored on my computer, I have been able to put together a lot of specialized fixes and applications all on that same flash disk (having an 8GB flash disk DOES help)

what mistake?

I might add that a 4GB flash disk is barely enough room to hold an OS such as OS X.

I use an 8GB stick to place my installer DVDs on so I can mess with them to make sure they will install the proper things for me.

I finaly tried to do so with the UMS partition of my Zen Vision M, set to 8GB. It boots (with Chameleon), but i either have a "still waiting for root device" or the system freeze (and my Zen shows that's it's no longer connected). What happens ?

PS : i had to disable legacy usb in my BIOS to have USB working on OSX. But to boot on my usb disk i've enabled it.

What distro did your place on your USB ?
There are no kexts for your chipset one the USB, you have to inject them first so the installer can see your internat Sata/Ide drives.

I put Leo4All on the USB stick, it works until I change something in the Extensions. How can I recreate the Extensions.mkext file? kextcacche -k /System/Library/Extensions won't work, even if I boot in single user mode and set the stick to read/write mode. How can I access full read/write access during the normal boot process? Is theresome thing like a startup-sequence or an autoexec.bat?

when you boot with "-s" you need o mount the drive using

/sbin/mount -uw /

have you done this?

EDIT: if you are booting off of a USB stick, why recreate the .mkext? just rm it and then reboot so it has to load everything and recreate it then.

If I use only -uw the drive is still not writeable. I tried -rw and -ruw. What are the differences?

So, I created a well looking Leo4All v3 image for USB. This installation image is older but in my opinion Leo4All v3 is the best image I ever had (of more than 25 since Tiger). If someone is interested, I have uploaded it to rapidshare, but without the main Leopard-10.5.2 install package, this must be copied from DVD. So it needs so 'only' about 980 MB and is faster to download.

Specs: Booting time (after Darwin counter timeout till language selection screen): 41 secs, installation time: 8:30 mins after the driver selection. This is on an Athlon 64 4000+, faster computers may be quicker because the files can be faster decompressed.

I used for this an 8 GB USB stick and created a partition of 4,25 GB, the resulting partition will be 4,38 GB (4.697.620.480 bytes) so that it still fits on a DVD (4.698.669.056 bytes). The other partition I use for Updates and software which I need for the installation. I optimized the image a bit, so you can access the usual folders (System, Library, Applications, Installation etc.) without tricks, but the image is not messed up, you only have two icons in the main window. The most important thing is that the image is defragmented. The main installation package was messed all over the disk, so I deleted it and cleaned the drive with iDefrag. Now the most important files, especcially Kernel and Extensions, are directly at the beginning. I made it bootable with Cameleon.

To create a bootable USB-Stick from it, create also on an stick with 8GB or more two partitions, the first must be 4,25 GB. Check the boot sector type for MBR mode. Now restore the image on the first partition, the image is already checked for restoring. The procedure will take about 1,5 hours. After this is successfully finished, insert the Leo4All installation DVD, open it an press Alt+Shift+G on a Windows keyboard or Command+Shift+G on an Mac keyboard. Now enter this path: System/Installation/Packages and press Return. Now search for the package Leopard-10.5.2.pkg. Copy it best first from DVD to your harddisk and then from harddisk to the USB stick. in the USB stick you don't need use use the path entry, you can access the files directly using the 'Leo4All' folder in the image. After this make the stick bootable with Chameleon. Note: If you have only a 4GB stick the space maybe not enough. So you have to delete some (for you) unneccessary languages to get more space.

Even if you don't want to use the Leo4All image you can use this guide to create an bootable installation stick with your own preferred OSx86 version. An installation image on USB is a great thing, no long waiting times, also the applications will be started much faster. And you can use it on the new netbooks which have no inbuilt DVD-ROM anymore.

Yeah I wasn't sure if i should post the links or not... first I didn't want to but otherwise some people don't want to PM everytime, it would have been easier this way.

@nexusmacmy USB memory after reboot just only see itself as a HDD. I can only see USB memory name on booting option as HDD. I cant see my HDD and it cant see while booting. the problem still exists how can I see HDD from USB memory?

when you say flash memory, you are talking about a flash drive/flash media that retains the data you place on it correct...?

if you've got the correct kernel extensions to use with your hardware, you should be able to see it by using the methods we've already covered above.

edit all of these extensions on the flash drive while running within the OS you already have installed on the Hard drive... don't try to copy it over to the flash drive while booted up from it.

I'm not able to follow all of your thoughts as you've posted them. Can you clarify a bit?

Alright, so I have been trying my best to follow this, and I've noticed this on my own machine. My very first installation attempt installed OS X onto my 8GB flash drive. It was not until after that installation that the Mac OS installer was able to recognize my machine's internal HDD. With the flash drive plugged into the machine at boot up, the gray Apple loading screen pops up after the Darwin prompt like it normally does, but without the flash drive, it reverts to the typical black screen with tons of text going through it (like a verbose option).

My question is, does the USB flash drive help the computer to boot up? And is there a way to make this "boot up drive" available as a partition on the actually computer HDD so you won't need the USB to boot? As stupid as it sounds, I've seen youtube videos of people simply pressing their power button and bam, the computer just boots up like a normal Apple would. lol I'm just trying to get my computer to a point where it will do this!

@rocafellabryanAlright, so I have been trying my best to follow this, and I've noticed this on my own machine. My very first installation attempt installed OS X onto my 8GB flash drive. It was not until after that installation that the Mac OS installer was able to recognize my machine's internal HDD. With the flash drive plugged into the machine at…

I guess my first question is: did you follow the thread to create a MAC OS X INSTALL FLASH DRIVE or did you actually install Mac OS X TO the flash drive from a DVD?

My own input to this thread was to make it faster to boot into a working MAC OS X INSTALL FLASH DRIVE so it would be easier for people to make sure their systems were supported by the different distros out there by simply editing the installer.

Have you by any chance installed chameleon to the Hard Drive (not flash drive)?

Let me know and I'll try to be of more use here.

Wiki updated

i added a bit of info about installing from flash to the wiki under howto

@nfoav8orBoot up normally into OS X and then run Disk Utility. Either insert the DVD or find the .iso you used to write the DVD (the .iso is faster) and select the flash drive on the left. Then select Restore on the top tab and place the respective items in the Source and Destination fields. This will take a while so sit back and read a book…

So I can apply this to an exernal hdd as well ?

-transfer the image i want to use unto the MAc hdd
-plug in my external hdd (formated to HFS+)
-Select restore and select my iso as the source and my externall as the destination
-open the chameleon installer (how and where do i do this? b/c im new to macs) and select my external usb as he installation destination (is this step to install the actual running OSX on my external ? b/c I dont want to do that. and hopefully i can skip this step)

@natewill18So I can apply this to an exernal hdd as well ? -transfer the image i want to use unto the MAc hdd -plug in my external hdd (formated to HFS+) -Select restore and select my iso as the source and my externall as the destination -open the chameleon installer (how and where do i do this? b/c im new to macs) and select my external usb as…

Yes. You can restore your installation DVD to an external HD from Disk Utility. When you install Chameleon you are only installing the bootloader (not an operating system) so your PC will realize that you can boot from the disk. To install chameleon, be running an installed OS X system and download the installer from chameleon's website (chameleon.osx 86.hu/). Open the installer and make sure you select the proper drive (after you've performed the restore to it).

Now your installs will go faster. Enjoy.

No success

Im glad some of you have made it that far! As for me, I am unable to boot from the flash drive, it gives me EBIOS read error, as if its reading from a bad disk. I have used the recovery from a ISO and installed chameleon onto it, all with no succes! anyone have any ideas? Im using a sandisk cruzer 4gb on a striker ii extreme mobo

@Pyrokenesis_17Im glad some of you have made it that far! As for me, I am unable to boot from the flash drive, it gives me EBIOS read error, as if its reading from a bad disk. I have used the recovery from a ISO and installed chameleon onto it, all with no succes! anyone have any ideas? Im using a sandisk cruzer 4gb on a striker ii extreme mobo

I don´t know about this EBIOS error but i suggest converting the iso file to dmg first using diskutil. Then you need diskutil to check that new dmg before recovering it to the usb drive. Install chameleon and it should work..

Which image format do you have to use when converting ISO to DMG (compressed, sparse, ...)?

I've tried using the iPC ISO directly and never got anything bootable, the PC would attempt to boot from the stick, but all I got was a blinking cursor.

My previous attempts went like this...

- I had created 1 journaled partition on my 8GB stick with MBR
- Restored from ISO with Erase Destination unchecked - if checked it complained about the image (source needs to be imagescanned/scanned)
- Installed EFI loader with OSX86Tools

If you want to boot from a CD/DVD you should use non-compressed image. If you cant boot from it after burning ISO image to the DVD - i would suggest you to burn it again, slower. It should boot so probably either your ISO is broken or the DVD didnt burn correctly ?

The ISO is working fine from CD, but I would rather use a USB stick for faster installation. Problem is that I can't get it to work since the stick hangs at boot if restored directly from the iPC ISO file.

I used this guide...

i hackintosh.com/2009/02/make-bootable-mac-osx86-usb-stick-installer-yourself/

He installs the PC_EFI v8 loader from osx86tools. Could be that the loader doesn't work or that the ISO can't be used directly. So I want to convert to DMG first to see if it fixes the problem. But somehow I doubt that.

I patched a Leopard DMG image for the Toshiba L305 Laptop, and it is a LIVE edition so you get a full desktop and everything, then you can use the Carbon Copy Cloner app to clone the USB LIVE Leopard disk to your internal hard drive to install. its perfect. It even displays my correct CPU and RAM info.

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Okay I can boot from my flash drive using Chameleon, but once it loads I cannot see my internal hard drive? Any ideas as to why this is happening?