How to make a bootable install drive

[FongMan]

Hi Guys,

Forgive me if I repeated a post. I have an external drive and I have formatted and partitioned GUID and Mac OS Journaled, what I want to do is make an image of my install disks unto the partition, so I can just boot to my external drive and install the OS from that instead of the CD. I know that using the drive is significantly faster and i'm less likely to misplace the drive than I am the install disk.

If i remember correctly Install disk 2 is pretty much just iLife and iWork (trial) right? So I don't really need to worry about that. But when you are installing from the disk it prompts you to insert disk 2, so if I were to just make an image of disk 1 wouldn't it prompt me for disk 2? What is the best way to make my external drive a bootable install disk for the OS? If I can make the image both disk 1 and 2 then great, if not then no worries.

 

[surflordca]

I use SuperDuper and clone my Mac drive. In SuperDuper I just make sure that I select to make it bootable...

 

[FongMan]

Ok, just to make sure we are on the same page here. I don't want to just make a clone of my drive and have a bootable backup. Basically i want to make my external drive bootable and look as if I am booting to the CD. I want to be able to install the OS from this drive without needing to use the CDs. So when you boot to the drive it looks no different from booting to the CD, I can install the destination for the OS and so on.

 

[geoffreak]

SuperDuper should be able to do what you are requesting. Just create a partition on your HD that is large enough to fit the DVD on and tell SuperDuper to copy the DVD to the partition.

 

[jdechko]

I did a little research on this earlier, because I want to do the same thing (although I want to get an Air, and don't want to have to buy the superdrive at first).

Here's the gist of it. You need to make a DMG of install disk 1 and then restore it to a new partition.
First, you should put the restore DVD in your drive, and open up disk utility. In Disk Utility, select the leopard install image on the left-hand side and click new image at the top. Select a location to save the new image, name the image (should be the same as the original disk), and select DVD/CD Master. Leave encryption to "none".

(taken from here)

Next we need to restore the image. You need to have a blank partition on your external drive, which it sounds like you already have. Double click on the newly-created disk image to mount it. Return to Disk Utility, and click on the Restore tab. Drag the mounted disk image (leopard restore) to the source field, and your external partition to the destination field. Make sure that the erase destination box is checked, the checksum is optional. Click restore. Wait for the process to finish, and you're done!

(taken from here)

EDIT:NOTE - When you are in disk utility, don't use the top level items, use the child items. The top level items are the devices themselves, and won't let you do what you're wanting to. The child items are the partitions that contain the data you want.

 

[slpdLoad]

You can partition your drive, one partition for disk 1 and another partition for disk 2. Since both will be mounted during the install process, the transfer from disk 1 to disk 2 should not be an issue.

 

[jdechko]

Also, if you have other DVD's you want to put on there, you can just create the DMG file in step 1 and drag the DMG over to a data partition on your drive. So you could have MS Office, iWork, iLife, Aperture, etc. on your drive as DMG files. Double click them to mount the drive, and install just like you would from a CD. Drop any updates on there and, it's more or less a perfect restore solution.

 

[FongMan]

Yes that's what I was trying to remember how to do Jdecho, in Disk util. Thanks a lot. I'll check out superduper surflordca and geoffreak, sounds like a great program. And slpdLoad solved my multiple disk query. Thanks a lot guys.