Download Tools

This guide is specifically for creating a USB install disk for netbooks, but could also work for other Intel based computers as well.

What you will need: 

Preface:  

In essence, to make a bootable USB installer you simply rip the OSX disk as a .dmg, restore the .dmg you created onto a USB drive and then run the netbook boot maker app on the USB drive and off you go.  A few notes though; first of all, when I say retail I mean RETAIL.  Not a “distro” like iATKOS.  Not an .iso file that you downloaded from a torrent site.  The only way that I can guarantee that this guide will work for you is if you start with an actual copy of OSX that has not been tampered with, and the only way to guarantee that is to start with a legitimate copy of OSX.  It only costs about $30 and paying the money for OSX means that at least youre not breaking the law.  Youre simply violating Apples EULA which is not a criminal offense (although Apple would like to think so).  I have tested this method on both Snow Leopard 10.6.0 10A432 “Golden Master” and 10.6.3 10D575 and can confirm it works provided you follow my directions IMPLICITLY!

You must have a flash drive that is at least 8 GB or larger.  There is no way around it.  Even if you follow a guide to trim down the installation to fit on a single layer DVD, there is no guarantee that the resulting disk image will even be bootable or work with Netbook Boot Maker, as its designed specifically to work with unmodified retail disks only.  Not only that, but as I mentioned in my Windows 7 USB installer guide, very few USB drives are the actual size theyre advertised as.  Some are as much as a few hundred MB smaller, especially if they have built in firmware virtual disks like a lot of Sandisk and Western Digital drives do. I actually used a 320 GB external USB hard drive which I also used to back up my files and it worked great, albeit somewhat slower than installing from flash memory media.

Meklorts Netbook Boot Maker is available for download here.  Make sure you download 0.8.4 RC1.  0.8.5pre isnt quite stable yet.

The modified OSInstall file I mentioned is only required if you plan to install OSX on an MBR partitioned hard drive.  This would affect those who are installing OSX alongside a previous install of Windows.  However, if you are only planning on installing OSX, this is not necessary.

Part 1:  Rip Snow Leopard

As I already mentioned, you NEED a computer running OSX to do any part of this guide. There is no way around it.  However, you only need to be running OSX 10.4 or higher, so even an old eMac could technically do the job. A hackintosh, a buddys Macbook or even OSX running in a virtual machine (provided your virtual machine has USB access) will work.  And before you even bother asking, NO!!!!! There is no way to do this using Linux or Windows.  Transmac, Mac Drive, paragon HFS+ drivers or any other program will not help you.  You need to be booted into OSX.  Period.

1. Boot into OSX and pop your Snow Leopard disk into the DVD drive.
2. Open Disk Utility
3. click on the OSX install DVD and then click on  File > New > Image from “OSX Install DVD”

4. just use the default settings, which should be “read only” and “no encryption”.  Name the file whatever you want and click on save.  It will pop up saying that it is creating the .dmg file.  This part is probably going to take quite a while.

1.    plug in the USB drive that you plan to use as your installation media.  If you get a pop up window asking if you want to use the drive as a time machine backup, click no.  

2.    Click on Partition

3.    Select 1 partition and choose a name for the drive (optional)

4.    Click on the Options button.  THIS PART IS CRITICAL!!!  Change the partition type from MBR to GUID.  Then click on okay and proceed to partition the disk.  If you dont do this, there is a good chance your install disk wont boot.

Part 3: Restore the disk image onto the USB drive 

Before the .dmg can be restored onto the USB drive, you have to scan it.  If for any reason it fails, you can always restore the DVD directly without ripping it as a .dmg, but it takes a lot longer.  When I did this on my Hackintosh, I was able to scan the .dmg and restore it to the hard drive, but when I did the same process on Virtualbox the scan would fail but I was able to restore directly from the DVD.  Your mileage may vary.

1.    Click on Images > Scan Image for Restore.
2.    Once its done scanning, click on the disk image and click on the "restore" tab.
3.    Drag and drop the disk image onto the Source field and drag and drop the USB drive onto the Destination field.
4.   When prompted, click on Erase to restore the OSX install DVD image onto the USB drive.
Restoring the disc image onto the USB drive is by far the most time consuming part of this process.  Once youve restored the install DVD to your USB continue on the the next step.

Part 3: Prepare the USB drive for installing on non Apple hardware


The Netbook Boot Maker can be downloaded from here:
http://code.google.com/p/netbook-installer/downloads/list
Among other things, It provides a collection of .kexts that are patched specifically for netbook hardware.  It also installs a specially modified version of Chameleon Boot Loader which patches things like the vanilla kernel to allow booting on unsupported hardware and the graphics kexts to display in the proper resolution (1024x600 native resolution).  Although the Netbook Boot Maker and Netbook Installer are designed to work specifically on only a few netbooks -- most notably the HP Mini 9, Mini 10V, MSI Wind U100 and the Lenovo S10 to name a few -- since almost all netbooks share similar hardware this should work to some extent on almost any Intel Atom based netbook.


1.   With the USB drive plugged in to the computer, open the Netbook Boot Maker app.
2.   It should automatically detect the location of your USB installer.  Click on "Prepare Boot Drive".  It will only take a few minutes.  Once it completes, youre done!   The next step is optional and only required if you need to install OSX on an MBR partitioned hard drive.

Part 4: Prepare OSX for installing on MBR drives


If you plan on running only OSX on your netbook, you do not need to worry about installing on an MBR partitioned drive.  It is perfectly possible to install Windows or Linux on either GPT or MBR partitioned drives, but you will run into all sorts of issues with configuring boot loaders and it is simply more advisable to use MBR.  Boot Camp does not work on non Mac computers, so you will run into all kinds of issues trying to get each operating system to boot.  If you want to install OSX alongside an existing Windows install, you have to patch your install disk to work on MBR drives.  If you plan on triple booting, forget about GUID entirely.  Sure, it may be technologically superior to MBR but the world is not quite ready for widespread adoption of GPT just yet.

In this step you will patch your install disk to enable installing on an MBR partition. The instructions are version specific, meaning that each release of OSX requires a different patch.  Ive done this process on 10.6.0 10A432 and 10.6.3 10D575 successfully.

Patch 10.6.0 Build 10A432


Download the patch from here:
http://www.kexts.com/view/224-osinstall_framework_for_10.6_mbr_installs.html

1.  You will have to open a finder window as root and enable viewing hidden files.  Open a terminal window and type the following commands


sudo -s 
defaults write com.apple.Finder AppleShowAllFiles YES
killall Finder
/System/Library/CoreServices/Finder.app/Contents/MacOS/Finder


Then click on a blank space on the desktop and open a new Finder window.  You should now be browsing with hidden files visible.
2.  As root, navigate to
/Volumes/{your-usb-installer]/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/Install.framework/Frameworks/OSInstall.framework/Versions/A/

3.  Replace the OSInstall file with the one you downloaded.  That is it!