2 OS on 1 USB stick

[Kaiser Phoenix]

Hi all, I just wanted to ask a quick question, is it possible to have OSX LION, and SNOWLEOPARD bootable OS on 1 single USB flash drive?

I managed to get my LION purchase onto my USB Flashdrive (64GB) and was wondering if I could also put Snow Leopard onto it as well so that when I have a broken machine, I can plug the USB and have the option to boot/install EITHER from lion or SL.

Thank you

 

[Hansr]

Yes, just partition. As long as you choose the correct GUID schema the machine can boot based of selected volume.

 

[Kaiser Phoenix]

Ok thank you!

 

[r0k]

Yes, just partition. As long as you choose the correct GUID schema the machine can boot based of selected volume.

1 - in disk utility, make sure the partition scheme is GUID.

2 - instead of 1 partition, pick 3 partitions, make 1 of them 8 gig and another of them 8 gig and the last one 48 gig (or whatever is left over).

3 - make a dmg from the SL disk, then restore it to one of the 8 gig partitions you just created. Name that partition Macintosh HD SL.

4 - use disk utility to restore Lion's installESD.dmg to the other 8 gig partition. Name that partition Macintosh HD Lion.

5 - On the remaining partition, call it data and you can put extra stuff like "install mac os lion.app" so you don't have to keep redownloading it for every machine you own.

When you boot, holding down option, you should see multiple drives to boot from. You should see your internal drive and all 3 partitions on the USB drive as possible boot choices but of course data won't actually boot. BTW, You might be able to get away with only a 16 GB stick for Lion and SL on one stick.