Reinstall Mac OS X from disc image in hard drive residing in OWC data doubler

[abciximac]

Hi,

I'm wondering if it's possible to reinstall OS X onto an OWC SSD in the main drive bay from a disc image of the Mac OS X install disc residing in a HDD within the OWC data doubler?

I've been unable to boot up from the install disc using an external DVD drive, and have had no luck with a bootable Mac OS X USB key. I'm currently using a new 2011 macbook pro 13", with a OWC SSD in the main drive bay and the OWC data doubler containing the original HDD.

Thanks.

 

[blevins321]

Shouldn't be an issue to do this from a bootable external disk. What do you mean by "can't boot"? Does the disk appear when you hold down Option on startup?

 

[simsaladimbamba]

As the disk image will not be booted when Mac OS X is not running, you can't install from that disk image. I have a separate partition of 12GB just consisting of the clone of my Mac OS X installation DVD and the combo updater and some other updates. Why not use CarbonCopyCloner to make a clone of the mounted disk image while in Mac OS X to the USB flash memory thumb drive (worked for me too) or an external HDD partition?

 

[blevins321]

As the disk image will not be booted when Mac OS X is not running, you can't install from that disk image. I have a separate partition of 12GB just consisting of the clone of my Mac OS X installation DVD and the combo updater and some other updates. Why not use CarbonCopyCloner to make a clone of the mounted disk image while in Mac OS X to the USB flash memory thumb drive (worked for me too) or an external HDD partition?

I thought that you could restore from a nonbooted image using Disk Utility from an Install Disk?

 

[simsaladimbamba]

I thought that you could restore from a nonbooted image using Disk Utility from an Install Disk?

How then? And why not use the install disk then?

 

[blevins321]

How then? And why not use the install disk then?

He has two drives in his computer - the data doubler optical enclosure drive and the SSD. The image is on the doubler drive. So boot using the install disk on the external optical drive and open disk utility to restore the image to a formatted SSD. Probably has apps/updates on the image that he/she doesn't want to have to mess with again.

 

[simsaladimbamba]

He has two drives in his computer - the data doubler optical enclosure drive and the SSD. The image is on the doubler drive. So boot using the install disk on the external optical drive and open disk utility to restore the image to a formatted SSD. Probably has apps/updates on the image that he/she doesn't want to have to mess with again.

I thought we were talking about a disk image of the installation DVD and not of a working installation of Mac OS X.

 

[abciximac]

thanks for all the replies.

Let me explain my situation further:

I created a disc image of the Snow Leopard 10.6.3 retail version dvd that I got some time ago. (I've just left the US for work elsewhere and some of my stuff including the install discs that came with the 2011 macbook pro had not arrived yet)

I've tried reinstalling OS X using the dvd in an external dvd drive as well as a USB key. When I powered on the laptop with the option key I do get the external stuff recognized. However, when I attempt to boot from those elements the computer never went past the grey screen with the Apple logo. I've read somewhere on this forum that this issue is due to the 2011 macbook pro having a new kernel and incompatibility issues with "older" OS X versions and such.

Maybe a workaround could be installing from and 'internal' HD using that disc image I created. Wondering if anyone has done something like that and am itching to try.

 

[simsaladimbamba]

thanks for all the replies.

Let me explain my situation further:

I created a disc image of the Snow Leopard 10.6.3
...
I've read somewhere on this forum that this issue is due to the 2011 macbook pro having a new kernel and incompatibility issues with "older" OS X versions and such.

Maybe a workaround could be installing from and 'internal' HD using that disc image I created. Wondering if anyone has done something like that and am itching to try.

As the 2011 MBPs came with a special build of 10.6.6, you can't use a 10.6.3 or even 10.6.6 installer of Mac OS X. You either need the grey restore DVDs or a 10.6.7 install DVD (which aren't available) or 10.6.7 installer (which may be possible to build, but I don't know how), as 10.6.3 till 10.6.6 does not include the drivers for the 2011 MBPs.