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sanity check - wiping my 2008 MBA before genius bar appt...

G

gjarold

macrumors regular
Original poster
Nov 14, 2007
123
0
I have a late 2008 MBA running snow leopard.

I would like to have this system reloaded from scratch with mavericks. No upgrades, no loading one OS and then loading a newer one on top ... I am going to boot to a linux CD and dd my hard drive, wiping it out completely.

Then I will go to genius bar and just shrug and say "me want mavericks".

Two questions:

1. Am I correct that they can just boot off USB mavericks install media and load mavericks from scratch, with no upgrading from one OS to another ?

2. Any reason this won't work or will backfire or ... something ?

Thanks.
 
P

pepede

macrumors member
Mar 6, 2012
37
0
You can do it yourself by preparing usb drive. There is many tutorials in web.
 
G

gjarold

macrumors regular
Original poster
Nov 14, 2007
123
0
Hmmm....

So, I followed some instructions - downloaded mavericks.app, opened it up, found the baseinstall.dmg, or whatever, and made a bootable USB stick.

So far so good.

The problem is, it's not the entire installation - it still connects to the Internet to do several *gigabytes* of additional downloaded components.

This is very difficult on my satellite link in a rural area.

So, a followup question is:

Is it possible to get *all* of mavericks installation onto the USB drive so that you can do the install completely from USB ? I don't mind the connection to apple to check my availability or my license or whatever, but I cannot download the OS ... I need the actual install local, on local media.
 
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harrisonw1998

macrumors regular
Jul 18, 2011
107
3
I don't think that it downloads other components--it should have everything in the installer app. Are you sure it is downloading and not just taking a while installing because it is perfectly normal for a very long install time...
 
G

gjarold

macrumors regular
Original poster
Nov 14, 2007
123
0
harrisonw1998 said:
I don't think that it downloads other components--it should have everything in the installer app. Are you sure it is downloading and not just taking a while installing because it is perfectly normal for a very long install time...
Click to expand...


No.

First of all, it *refuses* to install if I am not connected to the Internet. Is that normal ?

Second, it says "downloading additional components" and gives me a 16-18 hour progress meter ... 30-40 mins later it had settled down to 16 hours and counting....

Can you install Mavericks without an Internet connection ?

NOTE: this is on a wiped computer - hard drive is all zeros - nothing there at all. This is NOT an upgrade...
 
halledise

halledise

macrumors 68000
May 7, 2009
1,846
623
Hamilton Island, Whitsundays, QLD Australia
from Arstechnica and the foolproof way if you're confident of using Terminal
(it came from MacRumors in the first place!)
http://ars.to/1a8dwoJ

The only-slightly-less-easy way

If you don't want to use Diskmaker X for some reason, poster tywebb13 on the MacRumors forums has your hookup. Assuming that you have the OS X Mavericks installer in your Applications folder, and you have a Mac OS X Extended (Journaled)-formatted volume named "Untitled" mounted on the system, you can create a Mavericks install drive by typing the following command into the Terminal.

sudo /Applications/Install\ OS\ X\ Mavericks.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/Untitled --applicationpath /Applications/Install\ OS\ X\ Mavericks.app --nointeraction

The command will erase the disk and copy the install files over. Give it some time, and your volume will soon be loaded up with not just the OS X installer, but also an external recovery partition that may come in handy if your hard drive dies and you're away from an Internet connection.

Whichever method you use, you should be able to boot from your new USB drive either by changing the default Startup Disk in System Preferences or by holding down the Option key at boot and selecting the drive. Once booted, you'll be able to install or upgrade Mavericks as you normally would.
 
S

solsearchin

macrumors member
Apr 18, 2012
97
0
Just curious, what kind of internet connection do you have lol, I'm not sure about mavericks but on ML and Lion you can use disk maker, simplifying the process.
 
halledise

halledise

macrumors 68000
May 7, 2009
1,846
623
Hamilton Island, Whitsundays, QLD Australia
solsearchin said:
Just curious, what kind of internet connection do you have lol, I'm not sure about mavericks but on ML and Lion you can use disk maker, simplifying the process.
Click to expand...

just a standard ADSL 1 connection

the Terminal command way just works every time, whereas the DiskMaker whilst simple does not always work.
(Disk Maker has been updated for Mavericks - it's up to version 3b3 now - http://liondiskmaker.com/?p=189 )

so for example, when I was prepping a Mavericks stick to send to my daughter who lives on a remote island with limited internet access, I had 3 failures with DM which took around 30 minutes each attempt - frustrating to say the least.

so I tried the Terminal command method and it worked perfectly first time.
I've used that method ever since …;)
 
G

gjarold

macrumors regular
Original poster
Nov 14, 2007
123
0
halledise said:
from Arstechnica and the foolproof way if you're confident of using Terminal
(it came from MacRumors in the first place!)
http://ars.to/1a8dwoJ

The only-slightly-less-easy way

If you don't want to use Diskmaker X for some reason, poster tywebb13 on the MacRumors forums has your hookup. Assuming that you have the OS X Mavericks installer in your Applications folder, and you have a Mac OS X Extended (Journaled)-formatted volume named "Untitled" mounted on the system, you can create a Mavericks install drive by typing the following command into the Terminal.

sudo /Applications/Install\ OS\ X\ Mavericks.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/Untitled --applicationpath /Applications/Install\ OS\ X\ Mavericks.app --nointeraction

The command will erase the disk and copy the install files over. Give it some time, and your volume will soon be loaded up with not just the OS X installer, but also an external recovery partition that may come in handy if your hard drive dies and you're away from an Internet connection.

Whichever method you use, you should be able to boot from your new USB drive either by changing the default Startup Disk in System Preferences or by holding down the Option key at boot and selecting the drive. Once booted, you'll be able to install or upgrade Mavericks as you normally would.
Click to expand...


Thanks a lot - this was just what I needed.

God forbid apple would just have a disk image to download, but whatever.
 
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