USB install from another mac?

Hi, quick one if I may, I am looking to reinstall snow leopard on a new hard drive so my question is can I copy the necessary files from a friends Mac mini onto USB and boot from there? Obviously I'm not going to do this if it's illegal or whatever, thanks in advance

If you own a retail DVD installer for Snow Leopard 10.6, but do not have an optical drive in your computer, or the internal one has failed, it is possible to use another computer's optical drive to install OS X into a Mac.
{A copy from another Mac would not be correct or legal, also it likely won't work directly as the Installer puts correct parts into the machine it was installed into, such as hardware drivers, etc. And the disc is a license for one Mac to run it at a time.}
Under this circumstance, there are a few methods of using another Mac to perform this task; one is Target Disk Mode, if both Macs have FireWire &/or Thunderbolt ports and correct cables. Another is to use a utility in the Mac by the name of 'remote install Mac OS X' in the Utilities folder. There may be other similar means, depending on the version of computer and OS X your system(s) are running.
If only parts of the system are damaged or missing, you could use Pacifist utility from charlessoft company to extract the parts you need from a system disc, and it will install them from the desktop of the computer that needs them. The utility is a download and has a demo mode that should work adequately for this task.
You should own the retail DVD 10.6 Snow Leopard, if you have a computer that runs it. The disc (as needed) is proof of the License to use the software. With later computers, the Apple ID and the mac/app store has a record of your activity in regard to permissions of use and end user license.
Sorry to not be of much help.
I have antiques & most DVD media for each system.
And a few clones on external hard disk drives.
PS: Not sure about the copy to USB recovery idea; later Lion 10.7 and Mt Lion
had this, I'd seen info about it online. A cloned system, if your computer had one
could be used to extract or copy parts from. Some don't like drag/drop install.
Good luck & happy computing!
edited 3x

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