Booting and Installing Snow Leopard From A USB Drive

[harryhood]

I have Snow Leopard installed on an 8GB Flash Drive. It works all good and fine. The only thing is I don't want to do an upgrade, I want to do a FRESH erase and install of my machine (macbook). I tried plugging in the USB drive and restarting the computer while holding down "c", this proved to not work.

Any way that I can erase the computer completely and fresh install from my USB drive?

Thanks so much!

 

[professorjay]

I think you hold down the option key instead. Or the command key if that doesn't work.

 

[calderone]

To be clear, when you hold down option you will be presented with the volumes available for booting. Choose your USB drive and you are good to go.

 

[harryhood]

Awesome, thanks for your help guys. Its all working.

I was trying to do a clean install on a buddies macbook (had not done one in 3 years) because his computer was all whacked out. One of the big weird problems was that his hard drive does not show up on the desktop, the only way you can access it is by clicking on finder.

I figured erasing and doing a clean install would fix this, but its still there. Brand new install and his hard drive still is not there.

Any ideas on how to fix this?

Thanks!

 

[Eric S.]

Awesome, thanks for your help guys. Its all working.

I was trying to do a clean install on a buddies macbook (had not done one in 3 years) because his computer was all whacked out. One of the big weird problems was that his hard drive does not show up on the desktop, the only way you can access it is by clicking on finder.

I figured erasing and doing a clean install would fix this, but its still there. Brand new install and his hard drive still is not there.

Any ideas on how to fix this?

Thanks!

There's a Finder preference (I think, or could be Desktop preference) where you select what volumes appear on the desktop. One of the options is hard drives. Other options are optical media, etc.

If you installed but then migrated settings and preferences, it could have been preserved across the install.

 

[pcs are junk]

yeah dude, an install of snow leopard automatically removes the macintosh hd icon. you can add it again by left clicking on ur desktop, then go up to the top and under finder, select preferences, then click hardware and what ever it is that it says to show. im at school on a pc now sorry i would be more clear if i was at home.

 

[madog]

Awesome, thanks for your help guys. Its all working.

I was trying to do a clean install on a buddies macbook (had not done one in 3 years) because his computer was all whacked out. One of the big weird problems was that his hard drive does not show up on the desktop, the only way you can access it is by clicking on finder.

I figured erasing and doing a clean install would fix this, but its still there. Brand new install and his hard drive still is not there.

Any ideas on how to fix this?

Thanks!

Snow Leopard defaults to hiding local HDD's from the desktop which was the opposite for every system before it. Follow the directions the others stated and you'll be good.