Create startup disk

I noticed some problems with my mac book pro. I used the disk utility application and recieved a message to reboot with a startup disk. How do I create a disk? other sites recommended finding a file called Install Mac OS X Lion.app I could not find this file.
Any ideas?

Here is some information on the recovery process from Apple:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4718
(you do need to hit Command + R for it).
Alternately, hitting the Option key should bring up the startup manager and offer the recovery partition as a boot option.
I would still suggest making a copy of the installer after your download to be able to avoid having to download the entire OS whenever there is a problem.

Similar Messages

Creating Startup Disk on External HD

I will be getting an external HD for use with my MacBook (Late 2007). In addition to partitions for Time Machine backups and a master iTunes library, I want to create a startup OS X 10.5 partition that can boot the MacBook (and a new iMac that will be added shortly). Will the installation disk that came with the MacBook be able to create such a partition?
I understand that the partition needs to be a GUID partition to boot an Intel Mac, but will the same startup disk be able to boot both the MacBook and the new iMac? (The main purpose of the startup disk will be for emergencies and to be used as the base user account to be imported when installing OS X on other computers.)

Extended Hard Drive Preparation
1. Open Disk Utility in your Utilities folder.
2. After DU loads select your external hard drive (this is the entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. Note the SMART status of the drive in DU's status area. If it does not say "Verified" then the drive is failing or has failed and will need replacing. SMART info will not be reported on external drives. Otherwise, click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.
3. Click on the Options button, set the partition scheme to GUID (only required for Intel Macs) then click on the OK button. Set the number of partitions from the dropdown menu to three. Use the sizing gadget to set the size of each partition to what you want. Bear in mind your Time Machine partition should be about twice the size of the hard drive you are backing up. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Partition button and wait until the volumes mount on the Desktop.
4. Select a volume you just created (this is a sub-entry under the drive entry) from the left side list. Click on the Erase tab in the DU main window.
5. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Options button, check the button for Zero Data and click on OK to return to the Erase window.
6. Click on the Erase button. The format process can take up to several hours depending upon the partition size.
Repeat Steps 4-6 for each partition.
You can then boot from your Leopard Installer DVD and install Leopard on the partition you created for the Leopard installation. In order for the bootable volume to start both your computers you will need to update the Leopard version to what is required to boot the latest Mac model you have.

How to create startup disk to defray

I need to defrag. I have iDefrag software on a USB drive. When I use the Snow Leapoard install disk to start up, I cant see the USB drive where iDefrag rests. Can someone please advise.

Large files are de-fragmented automatically (on the Mac OS X partition) when they are opened. With use, fragmentation of large files improves automatically.
Unless you Hard Drive is nearly full, file fragmentation is unlikley to cause slowdowns.

I have a WD 2 tb hard drive that I want to use to back up my Mac Pro quad core. How do I create a back up startup disk? Also, when I used Time macine, it only backed up users and not the system or library folders. Ideas?

I have a WD 2 tb hard drive that I want to use to back up my Mac Pro quad core. How do I create a back up startup disk? Also, when I used Time macine, it only backed up users and not the system or library folders. Ideas?

Welcome to Apple Support Communities
Time Machine should be enough to make a backup of your files. Also, it should back up all folders, so open System Preferences > Time Machine > Options, and make sure that there are no folders included in the excluded items list.
If you want to create a bootable clone of your hard drive, you need to use an app like Carbon Copy Cloner or the Disk Utility's Restore feature > http://pondini.org/OSX/DU7.html

Bootcamp fails to create windows 7 startup disk

Bootcamp version 5, running on Mountain Lion, keeps failing on creating the Windows 7 Startup disk. I'm using a 8gb USB drive and it formats it without any problems. The process will carry on until around 50% of copying installation files and then fails.
I've tried 2 different USB Flash drives and I've check the ISO image for Windows 7.
Can anyone help me with a solution? Or why this is happening.
Thanks

Visit the Boot Camp forum https://discussions.apple.com/community/windows_software/boot_camp.
The Windows Support software download servers are notoriously slow. Try again and be patient. When you say it formats ok, it should be FAT format.
Your issue is addressed in the Boot Camp forum.

Create a startup disk on a thumb drive

Trying to create a startup disk on a thumb drive to diagnose my wife's hard drive which I think is failing (another problem I won't go into here). We are on the road and the only thumb drive I have is 4 gb. But when I try to create a startup disk for it using the Mac OS X operating CD, it says it's not big enough. But I'm guessing it wants to install all of OS X and I just want to install the essential files necessary for a startup disk which I'm assuming would easily fit on my thumb drive.
Is this doable? If so how? Or is there a way to do this using Disk Utility? I tried that, but couldn't figure out how. Also, we have an iPod that has plenty of space, but from what I can tell, I would have to erase it and we can't do that.
Bottom line: is there any way we can create a startup drive from an iPod that we don't want to erase or a 4gb thumb drive? thanks.

Jolly Giant -
Thanks for the links. Unfortunately, neither seem to solve my issue assuming I'm looking at it right.
I ran across the first link previously and gave it a try. In step 9 it says to select the volume (the USB Drive) and continue the OS X installation. Unfortunately, when I select the USB thumb drive volume, it says it can't install because the volume (USB thumb drive) is not big enough. Mine is 4gb. That's my real issue. I need to install just the OS X files that are necessary to boot a Mac from a USB drive, but all the instructions I've run across apparently are designed to only install a full version of OS X and my 4 gb drive is too small for that.
Your second link, which is also a link from the first link, apparently explains how to do this installation on a smaller thumb drive like mine. But when I click on the link, it comes up as a dead link for me.

Can't create a Tiger startup disk on an external drive

After backing up the applications and data files to DVD’s I installed Leopard on my Power Book PPC G4. Everything went without a hitch. Now I would like to create a Tiger startup disk on a USB drive. When I try to format the USB drive with the OS 10.4 disk that came with the laptop I get a message that says “Unable to find system 10.3 or later” just prior to the step that lets you pick the drive you wish to format. I would like to be able to startup in system 10.4 so I can run an older version of 4th Dimension in the Classic mode. Is there a way to accomplish this now that I have already successfully installed Leopard?

I quickly scanned your profile before posting the link to that KB article, and could have sworn that I saw an Intel-based Mac there... In any case, many people have successfully booted OS X from USB drives on PPC Macs. It's certainly not as good or reliable as using a FireWire drive, but you can read various reports about it here and by Googling something like +PPC Mac boot USB+. You'll come up with a lot of information, so I don't understand other posters denying it can be done...
Good luck.

Create a Raid1 on startup disk on Leopard server

Hi,
I need to create a raid1 after my Leopard Server installation. I want to mirror the startup disk with a other one.
Best regards

Creating a mirror with Apple DU destroys the data.
With 3 drives, use your system now as backup (you can pull it later) and use Disk Utility Restore to clone your system to the new mirror, after you create mirror. Then put the backup on the shelf for emergency backup.
SoftRAID has always been my choice for mirror (stripped reads and better feature) as well as for stripped RAIDs - don't know if it works with server though.
http://www.softraid.com - their pdf manual is worth a look.

What is my best solution for creating space on startup disk?

So, I'm a novice with Apple...novice in computers general actually.
I have about 58GB of music in iTunes and 85GB of photos in iPhoto- my two favorite things in life. I own a Time Capsule and it is set to do backups on my MacbookPro. My problem is that I have been getting "startup disk is almost full" notifications and have been trying to figure out how to create space without losing my data. How do I accomplish this? How do I know that Time Capsule has it if i delete it on my laptop and how do I get to it? I'm a little nervous to do anything but need the space.

Replace your hard drive with one that has a larger capacity.
Freeing Up Space on The Hard Drive
1. See Lion/Mountain Lion's Storage Display.
2. You can remove data from your Home folder except for the /Home/Library/ folder.
3. Visit The XLab FAQs and read the FAQ on freeing up space on your hard drive.
4. Also see Freeing space on your Mac OS X startup disk.
5. See Where did my Disk Space go?.
6. See The Storage Display.
You must Empty the Trash in order to recover the space they occupied on the hard drive.
You should consider replacing the drive with a larger one. Check out OWC for drives, tutorials, and toolkits.
Try using OmniDiskSweeper 1.8 or GrandPerspective to search your drive for large files and where they are located.

I'm having trouble creating an external startup disk

I have just obtained a new 500 Gigabyte hard drive to replace my iMac's G5 160 Gigabyte internal drive. Alas, when I started to take apart the computer, I realized that mine (late 2005 iSight model) is the only one of the G5 iMacs that is so complicated to dismantle that I could not do it myself. Cleverly (of course) I sent off for an external enclosure for the drive so I could at least have its backup (and startup) capacity. God forbid I should pay someone an unreasonable amount of money to install it for me.
Following suggestions here (in these forums) and elsewhere, I elected to use Data Backup, which came with another external drive I previously purchased, in order to clone my onboard hard drive. I followed the instructions, and (many hours later -- during which I largely was asleep) the cloning process completed.
I checked the contents of the drive, and all seemed in order. So I restarted and held down the option key, the better to select the new drive as startup disk.
And guess what? It wasn't there. I tried several more times. Only the iMac's drive (and, when turned on, any other external drives with startup capability I had attached) showed up.
Did I choose the wrong copy option?
I chose: "Entire Internal Drive to /Volumes/iMac Startup Clone"
Is that NOT the option I needed in order to clone the hard drive? Should I have used Carbon Copy Cloner (my previous method) instead?
The drive will not go to waste, of course, even though I can't install it (myself) into the computer. But startup capability would be nice.
Before I erase and start from scratch, I am hoping someone here might have a clue.
Many thanks, if so.
Leonard B.
Message was edited by: Leonard B.

Hi, BDAqua,
Nice to hear from you. You helped me with another recent question. Thank you.
The external case is Other World Computing's Mercury Elite Pro with Oxford chip set. Drive is an Hitachi deskstar 500 Gigabyte disk (I'll dig around for exact specs, if needed).
Weird thing is that the drive (partitioned into two disks, one boot, one for files) shows up in the Finder and in Disk Utility, but not in System Profiler. It's not visible at all there (not under Firewire, by which method it is connected, nor anywhere else). I can access its files, though, via Finder.
Very strange.

XP no longer shows up as a startup disk

After upgrading to leopard today, my XP partition no longer shows up as a startup disk.
I had/have my windows partition on it's own drive that was NOT created with bootcamp. I pulled my osx disk from the my mac pro and installed windows on the disk i had in bay 2 using 100% of the disk (ntfs). after installing the bootcamp windows drivers, i reinserted the osx disk and all has been well for the last 4 months,... until the upgrade today that is.
Now, when i go to the 'Startup Disk' preference Windows is no longer an option. the disk still shows up in Finder and I can navigate around the file system.
Anyone have any ideas on how I can get it to show up again? I'd really rather not have to reinstall if i can avoid it.
thx.

I have exactly the same problem (well, maybe).
I have installed MacFUSE and ntfs-3g. I don't know if this is of any relevance, because I don't know if it was working directly before I installed them.
I have my OS X and NTFS volumes on the same physical disk. I also had to install Windows twice because I buggered it up the first time (formatted the partition as FAT32 and ran into a bunch of disk errors).
I also notice that in WinClone I have 2 Untitled Volumes at /dev/disk0s3 and /dev/disk1s1. /dev/disk0s3 seems to be the legit Windows NTFS partition, but I have no idea what /dev/disk1s1 is about. I don't know if it's been there all along or not but perhaps it is confusing matters and stopping the legit Windows volume/installation from being detected...? Should that second volume exist at all? It doesn't exist according to the Disk util.
edit: I used fdisk just to have a look at the two untitled partitions.
Jacbook:dev jacteh$ sudo fdisk /dev/disk0s3
Disk: /dev/disk0s3 geometry: 10651/255/63 [171117408 sectors]
Signature: 0xAA55
Starting Ending
#: id cyl hd sec - cyl hd sec [ start - size]
1: 72 368 111 45 - 371 101 51 [ 218129509 - 1701990410] <Unknown ID>
2: 74 67 115 32 - 299 114 44 [ 729050177 - 543974724] <Unknown ID>
3: 65 114 111 32 - 353 115 52 [ 168653938 - 0] Netware 3.xx
4: 00 0 0 0 - 0 0 0 [ 0 - 0] unused
Jacbook:dev jacteh$ sudo fdisk /dev/disk1s1
Disk: /dev/disk1s1 geometry: 0/4/63 [63 sectors]
Signature: 0x0
Starting Ending
#: id cyl hd sec - cyl hd sec [ start - size]
1: 00 0 0 0 - 0 0 0 [ 0 - 0] unused
2: 00 0 0 0 - 0 0 0 [ 0 - 0] unused
3: 00 0 0 0 - 0 0 0 [ 0 - 0] unused
4: 00 0 0 0 - 0 0 0 [ 0 - 0] unused
I can hold the option key upon startup and manually enter Windows like that, but I'd prefer to be able to restart and boot Windows without having to hold a key.
Apart from not seeing the Windows boot volume in the system prefs pane, Boot Camp (and the rest of Leopard) has been excellent. I am impressed at the level of apple hardware support for windows. It seems to be much better than most native PC hardware.
I am dying for an answer. It's a fairly minor problem in the grand scheme of things, but **** it's frustrating.
Message was edited by: jacteh

How to install an OS on a Mac Pro without using a startup disk

Good Evening... I have purchased an Mac Pro 4,1 without any HDD attached to it and I have no startup disk for the installation an OS... When I do power on the Mac Pro, I get a flashing folder with a question mark in it! How can I be able to add an OS for two HDDs that I would like to install?

No. Boot the MP using the external drive. If you need to prep the drives, then:
Drive Partition and Format
1. Open Disk Utility in your Utilities folder.
2. After DU loads select the hard drive (this is the entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. Note the SMART status of the drive in DU's status area. If it does not say "Verified" then the drive is failing or has failed and will need replacing. SMART info will not be reported on external drives. Otherwise, click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.
3. Under the Volume Scheme heading set the number of partitions from the drop down menu to one. Click on the Options button, set the partition scheme to GUID then click on the OK button. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Apply button and wait until the process has completed.
4. Select the volume you just created (this is the sub-entry under the drive entry) from the left side list. Click on the Erase tab in the DU main window.
5. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Security button, check the button for Zero Data and click on OK to return to the Erase window.
6. Click on the Erase button. The format process can take up to several hours depending upon the drive size.
Once the drive has been prepped just clone your external drive to the internal drive:
Clone using Restore Option of Disk Utility
1. Select the destination volume from the left side list.
2. Click on the Restore tab in the DU main window.
3. Select the destination volume from the left side list and drag
it to the Destination entry field.
4. Select the source volume from the left side list and drag it to
the Source entry field.
5. Double-check you got it right, then click on the Restore button.
Destination means the Internal drive. Source means the External startup drive.

Delete files from startup disk?

Under system preferences I see the StartUp Disk, but where do I delete files from that in order to clear up some space?
I have MacBook Air OS 10.6.8. Is it just under my User? everything like applications and documents, etc?

Open Finder and look on the sidebar for the House Icon:
Click on it and you should see a list similar to this:
You should be able to delete any items in those folders to create the required space.
You may also delete any third party applications from your Applications folder.
Ciao.

I am having problems trying to boot from my Windows XP startup disk.

PLEASE HELP ASAP! I upgraded my MacBook Pro 17inch laptop for a larger hard drive. I had my MAC and Windows XP partitions re-installed but I am not able to boot from Windows XP partition. I can see both operation systems in the system preferences of the STARTUP DISK section but when I shutdown my computer and hold down the OPTION key there is no WINDOWS XP icon. I keep getting the error message: NO BOOTABLE DEVICE. INSERT BOOT DISK AND PRESS ANY KEY.
I have a very important project to complete this Friday and all of my files are on my PC partition. Could someone please help me to figure out how to get my PC drive to start rebooting? I would sincerely appreciate it. Thanks!

courtesy of the following site:
http://www.builtfromsource.com/2008/04/05/a-match-made-in-****-windows-xp-boot-c amp-20-and-ntfs/
Feel like wasting several hours? Try installing Windows XP with Boot Camp 2.0 (the version released as part of Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard) using NTFS, the file system required for partitions larger than 32 GB. Then watch as it fails miserably, again and again.
Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt:
<Windows root>\system32\hal.dll.
Please re-install a copy of the above file.
Sound familiar? You didn’t do anything wrong—this is actually Apple’s fault. Hal.dll, the “hardware abstraction layer”, doesn’t have any particular significance; it just happens to be the first file that Windows looks for as it’s loading. Attempting to replace this file with the copy on disk won’t work, and your boot.ini is probably fine.
So how do you fix it, then? The solution is a bit involved, but not too bad all things considered. Here are the steps:
If you haven’t already removed the bad installation, you’ll need to do so. In OS X, open Boot Camp, click Continue, select “Create or remove a Windows partition”, click Continue, and then click Restore.
Create a new partition as you did before, and start the installation.
After the computer has rebooted and it’s booted from the CD, type “R” to go to the console. You should be dumped to the C:\ prompt.
We’re going to reformat the drive as NTFS ourselves instead of letting the Windows installer do it. Type the following and hit Return:
format c: /q /fs:ntfs
Then type this to reboot the computer:
exit
Hold Option after it restarts, then boot to the Windows installation CD again (I believe it boots to the CD by default at this point, but this is just to be sure).
Install to C: (be careful not to select your OS X volume!), but—and this is important—choose NOT to reformat. Leave the file system as is.
Continue the installation process as you would normally.
That’s it! If things went well, the lovely 256-color Windows logo should load and you’ll be looking at Napa Valley in no time.

Trying to get rid of error "The startup disk cannot be partitioned or restored to a single partition". Recovery HD visible.

Hello,
I've been stuck for some hours now trying different things to install Windows 7 on my Macbook Air, and I think now is the time to call for some custom help.
I'm using OS X 10.9.5 Mavericks.
So some months ago I just wanted to run Linux on my laptop so I installed rEFInd, shrunk the Macintosh HD partition by 25GB and booted on a linux live USB flash I burned using dd.
Then I used gparted to create my linux partitions.
It worked just fine, even though disk utility from OS X seemed quite unhappy about this (it seemed to have incorrect informations about the filesystem on these partitions, seeing them as journaled Mac OS while they were clearly not). At this point already, the Recovery HD from mac showed up in disk utility, which I found weird but didn't bother me.
But recently I needed windows on my Mac. So after a few tries for the triple boot, I managed to create a bootable USB stick with boot camp, which already showed me the message "The startup disk cannot be partitioned or restored to a single partition" and hence refused to partition/install himself.
So I thought "OK, that's no big issue, I can just partition with disk utility and then boot on the USB stick and everything will work fine". But when EFI booting on the USB flash drive I got stuck at the beginning of Windows installer with no keyboard or mouse support.
After some hours spent googling, I was unable to find a working fix for that, and as there was no support for my case (where I used bootcamp to create the bootable flash but NOT to partition/reboot) I decided to give bootcamp a try.
So I erased my linux partitions, and cleaned up everything I could on the HD with disk utility. That means I now have two partitions showing in disk utility : Macintosh HD and Recovery HD.
When using disk utility from terminal, the list is :
/dev/disk0
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *121.3 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Macintosh HD            80.0 GB    disk0s2
   3:                  Apple_HFS Recovery HD             650.1 MB   disk0s3
But boot camp still isn't happy, and the message "The startup disk cannot be partitioned or restored to a single partition" keeps popping after the intro and I can't partition/boot from bootcamp.
So, as I don't understand what is wrong here anymore, any help would be greatly appreciated!
I will be watching the thread a lot because I really would like this resolved (or windows installed one way or another) this weekend; so any questions on my past manipulations or config just ask!
Thank you.

keyboard issues are also something of a common issue.
I wish the best threads were voted to the top of forums, something! Me, I literally burned out here, but after installing 10 Preview, wanted to "see what was going on" after hiatus of a couple years and see if anything had changed (no, not really!)
Also, these new Communities are not putting "more like this" and failing to help too.
I think rewriting Boot Camp Assistant's built in help and pdf would help a lot, and needs to be clearer and go into details. And Yosemite was not it seems tested against Boot Camp, and drivers for new Macs + new OS also lag behind. Again, common and no sign of improvement or change.
One of the tricks to the "can't partition" is rather simple - of course backup is step #1 and is spelled out - SHRINK the main HFS+ partition! then stretch it back to full length. Sometimes a reboot is needed, and sometimes even do a Safe Boot - not sure what but Recovry Mode might be a good option too. That does seem to consolidate free space, move files that are locked and cannot be moved otherwise, and allow BCA to partition, jusst be sure to have enough space left and large enough for a proper Windows install (and fudge factor).

Create startup disk

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