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Helixc0de

macrumors regular
Original poster
Apr 23, 2011
124
0
I recently purchased a Apple usb recovery for lion for my macbook pro. Whenever I put it in my pc or my mac it will show up as a cd not a usb. Is it possible to reformat it and use it as a normal usb drive. People are selling them on ebay as 8gb usbs.
 

snaky69

macrumors 603
Mar 14, 2008
5,908
488
I recently purchased a Apple usb recovery for lion for my macbook pro. Whenever I put it in my pc or my mac it will show up as a cd not a usb. Is it possible to reformat it and use it as a normal usb drive. People are selling them on ebay as 8gb usbs.

Yes, but it's a recovery drive, it's meant to show up as a CD and being unusable for anything else, are you really that cheap?
 

randomrazr

macrumors 65816
Jan 1, 2011
1,209
1
I recently purchased a Apple usb recovery for lion for my macbook pro. Whenever I put it in my pc or my mac it will show up as a cd not a usb. Is it possible to reformat it and use it as a normal usb drive. People are selling them on ebay as 8gb usbs.

whats the poin t of reformating it , if u ever need to reboot with the recover , ur gonna lose the ability to do it if u turn it into a usb drive LOL
 

Helixc0de

macrumors regular
Original poster
Apr 23, 2011
124
0
No I'm not cheap. I just want a usb drive made by Apple. Also I have 2 other lion recovery drives so that's not a problem. So can someone tell me how to make it into a normal usb drive. I know it's possible because people are selling them on eBay.
 

Prodo123

macrumors 68020
Nov 18, 2010
2,326
10
Yes, but it's a recovery drive, it's meant to show up as a CD and being unusable for anything else, are you really that cheap?

1. It's not meant to show up as a CD, it's supposed to be a USB. Clearly the OP has a problem, and you have a lack of knowledge.
2. You can boot from a FAT32 partition just like any other partition format.

@OP, did you try erasing the drive as FAT32 or exFAT in Disk Utility?
 

snaky69

macrumors 603
Mar 14, 2008
5,908
488
1. It's not meant to show up as a CD, it's supposed to be a USB. Clearly the OP has a problem, and you have a lack of knowledge.
2. You can boot from a FAT32 partition just like any other partition format.

@OP, did you try erasing the drive as FAT32 or exFAT in Disk Utility?

AFAIK the USB boot disk from Lion is supposed to show up as a recovery DISC when plugged in, I have no tried this myself as I haven't upgraded yet. I don't see how this is a lack of knowledge.

As far as making it a regular old USB drive, just format it with disc utility. Having it being Apple branded doesn't make it anymore reliable than a normal USB thumb drive though.
 

Helixc0de

macrumors regular
Original poster
Apr 23, 2011
124
0
When I attempt you erase all of the contents I can't click the erase button. It simply won't let me click the button. Also it is stuck on waiting for the drive.
 

Helixc0de

macrumors regular
Original poster
Apr 23, 2011
124
0
That's rather odd, care to post up a screenshot of disc utility with it plugged in?

2cff43c38dbf0c8d2331ec94183cd96d.jpg
 

snaky69

macrumors 603
Mar 14, 2008
5,908
488

Well that proves my point of it being shown as a DISC, and not a USB thumb drive, so whoever modded down my post and told me it was lack of knowledge, stick that in your pipe and smoke it.

With that said, do you have an OS X disc laying around somewhere, perhaps booting into the disk and using disc utility from there would net better results? Apart from that, I honestly don't have a clue.
 

Helixc0de

macrumors regular
Original poster
Apr 23, 2011
124
0
I have a leopard disc. But basically I just want to turn this recovery usb into a normal usb.
 

Prodo123

macrumors 68020
Nov 18, 2010
2,326
10
Try it with Windows then.
If that doesn't work, go to Ubuntu (if you can get your hands on it). Or, use the sudo command in Terminal to do the same.
 

Helixc0de

macrumors regular
Original poster
Apr 23, 2011
124
0
I used some program I got from a tutorial and it fried my other recovery usb. It won't even show up in my computer. I only got 1 left so don't need to mess this one up. Windows says the disc in foreign and invalid.
 

Prodo123

macrumors 68020
Nov 18, 2010
2,326
10
Well that proves my point of it being shown as a DISC, and not a USB thumb drive, so whoever modded down my post and told me it was lack of knowledge, stick that in your pipe and smoke it.

With that said, do you have an OS X disc laying around somewhere, perhaps booting into the disk and using disc utility from there would net better results? Apart from that, I honestly don't have a clue.

That's the PROBLEM. It's recognized as a CDFS partition instead of a normal FAT32 or exFAT partition. Erasing a CD is an entirely different process than formatting a USB drive (obviously), so when it tries to erase a USB using the CD method it doesn't work, and thus tells you to wait. And when it's done "erasing", instead of reformatting the drive it bricks it.

The trick is to FORCE it to format it to a FAT32 partition. Here's an article for the Terminal command: http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20070306150736965
 
Last edited:

Helixc0de

macrumors regular
Original poster
Apr 23, 2011
124
0
That's the PROBLEM. It's recognized as a CDFS partition instead of a normal FAT32 or exFAT partition. Erasing a CD is an entirely different process than formatting a USB drive (obviously), so when it tries to erase a USB using the CD method it doesn't work, and thus tells you to wait.

The trick is to FORCE it to format it to a FAT32 partition.

And how do I do that? Can you tv (teamview) me and do it? I'm lost at this point....
 

soundguy15

macrumors member
Dec 9, 2009
86
0
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_2_6 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8E200 Safari/6533.18.5)

Try this:
http://osxdaily.com/2011/07/04/format-the-macbook-air-usb-restore-key/

It's for the MacBook Air recovery key, but it should still work.
 

Prodo123

macrumors 68020
Nov 18, 2010
2,326
10
The precise command would be:

sudo diskutil eraseDisk FAT32 [new name] [disk number]



The command:

diskutil list

will give you the list of disks, and their corresponding disk numbers.


Be careful, as this may wipe your hard drive clean if you put in the wrong numbers.
 

Helixc0de

macrumors regular
Original poster
Apr 23, 2011
124
0
I did this and now It won't even show up on my pc or my mac....Thanks a lot
 

Adamantoise

macrumors 6502a
Aug 1, 2011
991
388
Why would you want an Apple branded USB stick? Even worse is you want to compromise your $70 restore disk in the process?
 
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