Create a hard-drive based OS X installer

Jan 04, '06 05:55:00AM

Contributed by: dangottesman

A recent post reminded me of a trick I've been using for the past year or so with great success, so I figured I'd share. Being a Mac specialist, I find myself having to do OS installs on a pretty regular basis. I carry around a couple of 2.5" FireWire hard drives loaded with installers, diagnostics, and other goodies.

I wanted to be able to install the OS from one of my hard drives, like in the old days of OS 9, instead of having to boot the the machine from a CD or DVD. So here's what I did:

I used Mike Bombich's NetRestore Helper application (part of the NetRestore package) to create an Apple Software Restore (ASR) disk image of the Mac OS X install DVD. Then I applied that disk image to a partition on one of my hard drives, and voila! I had a clone of the install disc on my hard drive, which boots in seconds, and takes mere minutes to perform a system install (depending, obviously, on the speed of the machine you're working on, and which options you're installing).

Read on for a step-by-step walkthrough and some additional notes and thoughts.

First, pop your OS install disc into your machine. Once it's mounted, fire up NetRestore Helper. I generally leave all of the default settings in place, but if you're in a rush, you can swtich from a compressed image to a read-only (non-compressed) one. From the Select Master Disk pop-up menu, choose your OS installer. Click the padlock button in the lower-left-hand corner to authenticate, and then hit the Create Master Image button. Pick out a name and destination for your image file, and then hit Save. This process takes a few minutes (usually about 10-15, in my experience), depending on the speed of your drive/machine.

Now, you're ready to apply your disk image to a hard drive. There are a couple of ways to do this, the easiest of which is to use Apple's Disk Utility (found in your Utilities folder). Once open, click on the partition that you want to use in the column on the left. Then click the Restore tab on the right. Drag the partition (from the left) onto the Destination field, and then drag (or use the Image button) your newly made disk image file onto the Source field. Check the Erase Destination checkbox, and, if you're in a hurry, check the Skip Checksum checkbox, and then hit the Restore button. This part only take a minute or so. Once it's done, you're good to go.

Test it out by plugging your drive into a machine and booting into the Startup Manager (hold down the Option key after you hear the startup chime). You should see (eventually; some machines seem to take forever to poll for valid boot disks) a button with your volume (which should be named MacOS Install DVD or the like) appear. Select it, and the machine should boot right into the installer.

A couple of notes/things to consider:

  1. I suggest using a small partition on your drive -- I use 4GB -- for each installer disc you decide to image.
  2. Resist the urge to rename the volume from MacOS Install... to something more useful (like Tiger Install) -- I've never done it, and haven't had a single problem. I've got a feeling that changing the name would break something. Call me superstitous.
  3. Ideally, you'd want the volume you're using for this to be read-only; I've tried using the 'Locked for Editing' feature in Disk Utilities' partitioning section, but it doesn't seem to do anything. If anyone out there knows of a way to lock a volume down permanently, please let me know.
Here's how I've got my 100GB drive Toolbox drive set up ("Serving Suggestion"):
  1. 4GB partition -- Tiger DVD image/install (10.4.3)
  2. 4GB partition -- Tiger Server image/install (10.4.3)
  3. 4GB partition -- Panther DVD image/install (10.3.5 ... I know what you're thinking -- "Hey, there was never a Panther install DVD! What are you talking about?" Well, if you dig into this hint, you can make one.)
  4. 10GB partition -- bootable diagnostics volume (10.4.3, with all of my diagnostics and utilities installed and ready to go)
  5. Remaining space -- storage partition, with application installers, updaters, etc.
And there you have it. Hope it saves you as much time as it does me.

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