Snow Leopard 10.6.3 Installation on external USB

I've been trying to install Snow Leopard onto an external USB drive. I've looked at a dozen different YouTube videos and other posts regarding the process, but I can't seem to get mine to work. Here is my process:
1. Open Disk Utility
2. Create 2 partitions - one bootloader partition and one a partition for the OS to be installed
3. Insert Snow Leopard disc
4. Click Restore and put OSX in the Source spot, the bootloader partition for the destination. I have tried both unchecked and checked for the 'erase destination' checkbox.
I get the following error:
Restore Failure: Could not find any scan information. The source image needs to be imagescanned before it can be restored.
I click 'Scan Image for Restore' and then once that completes I click 'Restore' again. most the time it still gives me the same error. After trying a few different things, I am finally able to get it to work (supposedly). I run the install, it restarts my computer, and then it sits there on the white screen with the apple logo. If I hold down the option button, the new install doesn't show up as an option to select.
I'm at a loss as to what I should do next.

I have a 24" iMac with a non-functiong drive (spits every disc out without trying to read them). I want to upgrade from OS 5 to OS 6 (Snow Leopard) snd then on to a higher OS, which I understand I can download from Apple (so need for a drive). I followed your steps but could not go forward because my flash drive had 8 gb and once it was formatted according to your instructions, I only had a little more than 7gb left, which was not sufficient. So I bought a 64 gb flash drive and just went through the process again. The installation of Snow Leopard onto my flash drive took hours, but finally completed. I was expecting to have the installation disk installed so I could then insert the flash drive into my iMac and install OS 6. You gave no directions on how to proceed once you launch the download onto the flash drive. Since I had no installation program on the flash drive, I tried making a disk image of the installation disk, which I then copied onto the formatted flash drive. However when I inserted it into my iMac and tried to install the OS, I got the message saying I neded to burn it onto DVD disc. That, of course is no solution because my drive does not work. Am I missing something (unstated) in your instructions? I followed them a T. Is there something else I can do?
Thanks.

Similar Messages

  • Imposible continue the installation of Snow leopard 10.6 on a 1TB external hard disk, what can I do?

    Imposible continue with the installation of Snow leopard 10.6 on a 1TB external hard disk. I did the same last year and I continued working but suddenly appeared the simbol with a folder and a question mark and I know this is a problem so I click in the format option to the hard disk and when I tried to install again Snow Leopard, 'cause I want to recover my backups with Time Machine, I couldn't continue because the installation didn't respond to the click in the Utilities option or to next step > continue . Please, What can I do? I'll wait for your answers. Thank you so much in advance.

    Hello Melophage,
    It is the original hard drive which should have been erased by the previous owner. The problem is, I cannot access it without any OS installed. Or maybe there is a bootable USB or DVD that can do it ?
    Just an indication: when I boot without CD inserted in it, it shows a grey folder icon with a questionmark like this one:
    Thank you for your help
    PS: Yes, I am interested by the replacement pair of grey installation DVDs for my model. Where can I purchase this ?

  • Installing Snow Leopard on New Internal SSD (without External drive)

    All,
    I have been searching and searching for a sufficient answer for this question, but have come up short thusfar. So any help or direction would be greatly appreciated.
    Basically I have an early 2009 MacBook Air (RevB) with a 128 GB HDD (not SSD). It has been painfully slow the past few months, and with the move to SSD for the new Air's - I've decided to swap my older HD for a new 64GB RunCore SSD (using the online guide from iFixit). However, as the MacBook Air inherently has no DVD drive - and the new HD will completely blank and not allow for the DVD Sharing to take place, I'm a bit stuck.
    Here's where the complication sets in - I do not have (and would really rather not purchase) an external Superdrive or external DVD drive just for this one process. However, I do have a MacBook Pro that I would like to use to install Snow Leopard onto the new blank internal SSD.
    Finally, I would also like to install Snow Leopard cleanly (i.e. not cloning my existing MacBook Air HD first).
    Therefore, my BIG question (in three parts is:
    1) Can I install Snow Leopard onto the new internal SSD before I install the new SSD itself into the MacBook Air (i.e. the new internal SSD comes with an external enclosure to presumably allow for cloning prior to installation). Therefore, can I just install Snow Leopard from my MBP's Superdrive to the new SSD using the new SSD + Enclosure as an external HD?
    2) When complete, and then installed in the MacBook Air, will the new internal SSD boot correctly?
    3) Finally what formats should I go for (GUID, Journalled, etc.) - or is that not really applicable in this case?
    Hopefully that all makes sense...?
    And thanks in advance!
    -Eddie

    Okay just copied this from a tutorial on how to do it.
    *OSX 10.6 method for bootable USB key install*
    Insert your retail DVD into drive.
    Plug in usb key. I recommend getting at least a 16gig drive so you don’t run into capacity issues.
    Open Disk Utitlity. Locatied in Applocations/Utitilties/DiskUtitily.app
    Partition the USB drive and select GUID in the options so it will be bootable on a Mac.
    Select restore and drag the image of the DVD on the left into the input path.
    Drag the USB drive into the destination drive.
    Click the restore button.
    Sit back and relax cause you will be waiting for about 20-30 mins for the key to be formatted properly.
    Hope this helps

  • Can I start up my new imac (Snow Leopard) from a Tiger installation disc?

    Last week I upgraded to an entirely new machine. My old imac was running on Tiger and the logic board failed. Though I had an external, I had my local Apple store transfer my hard drive data to my new mac. Since then, I've run Disc Utility a few times, each time with no problem until today.
    Disc Utility is giving me the following error:
    The volume Macintosh HD was found corrupt and needs to be repaired.
    Error: This disk needs to be repaired. Start up your computer with another disk (such as your Mac OS X installation disc), and then use Disk Utility to repair this disk.
    Since I don't have a Snow Leopard disc, I've tried starting up with my old Tiger installation disc, but to no avail... At the risk of sounding a little stupid, should Apple have given me a Leopard disc with my purchase?

    bgaribay wrote:
    Last week I upgraded to an entirely new machine. My old imac was running on Tiger and the logic board failed. Though I had an external, I had my local Apple store transfer my hard drive data to my new mac. Since then, I've run Disc Utility a few times, each time with no problem until today.
    Disc Utility is giving me the following error:
    The volume Macintosh HD was found corrupt and needs to be repaired.
    Error: This disk needs to be repaired. Start up your computer with another disk (such as your Mac OS X installation disc), and then use Disk Utility to repair this disk.
    Since I don't have a Snow Leopard disc,
    I've tried starting up with my old Tiger installation disc, but to no avail...
    you can not use the tiger disk. you need to use your snow leopard disk. what happened to yours? every new computer comes with one. it's called install disk one and is packaged with every new computer.

  • Snow Leopard (10.6.3) Installer Failed, MacBook Shuts off on boot

    Hi all,
    So a friend of mine recently bought an OOTB Snow Leopard install Disc from Apple and attempted to install OSX 10.6.3 on his MacBook White (I can't remember exactly what version of OSX he was running before but I know it was 10.5.x). Some time into the Installation, the Installer fails with the screen "Install Failed" and under that it says "Mac OSX could not be installed on your computer" with a big yellow exclamation sign. Under that it says " The Installer encountered an error that caused the installation to fail. Contact the software manufacturer for assistance. Click Restart to restart your computer and try installing again."
    However, when he restarted and tried to boot up, the computer shuts off after getting to the grey Apple screen with rotating gear. I am not sure why the install failed, but I suspect now it has corrupted the old version of OSX which resided on the hard drive, and is causing the startup to fail. I had him boot from the OSX 10.6 Installation media and run Disk Utility and try to Repair his hard drive (Macintosh HD), but the Repair fails and window pops up "Disk Utility stopped repairing 'Macintosh HD'. Disk Utility can't repair this disk. Back up as many of your files as possible, reformat the disk, and restore your backed up files."
    The details of the Repair printed the following:
    Verify and Repair "Macintosh HD"
    Checking Journaled HFS Plus volume.
    Checking extents overflow file.
    Checking catalog file.
    Invalid node structure
    The volume Macintosh HD could not be verified completely.
    Volume repair complete
    Updating boot support partitions for the volume as required.
    Error: Disk Utility can't repair this disk...disk, and restore your backed-up files.
    I had him try to run repair a few times to be sure it would not complete, to which he said it failed the same each time. Then I had him try to boot up in Safe Mode, but the boot up was the same, computer powers off after hitting the Apple loading screen. He has confirmed that this could not be due to the battery or overheating. Is there anything else we can try before reformatting the drive? Is there a way to eliminate hard drive failure from the equation and conclude that it is a corrupt OS? I would hate for him to lose all of his data if there are any other options, please let me know.
    Thanks,
    Matt

    Invalid node structure requires a robust disk repair utility such as DiskWarrior 4 - The Disk Utility for Mac Disk Repair, Mac Directory Repair
    The pre installed Disk Utility app cannot repair this.

  • Can I reboot my new iMac running OS 10.7 into Snow Leopard 10.6.8 from an external hard drive

    I have installed my hard drive from a previous but terminally I'll iMac that was running Snow Leopard into a Sata to USB  enclosure. This is displaying on the desktop of my new iMac running Lion as an external Hard drive,also system preferences sees it as a start up source.My question is , is it safe to restart into Snow leopard without causing a kernel panic and if it does boot will it be fast enough to use as it as a USB drive.I know I could try it and see, but I would rather some advice.
    Regards
    John Lewis

    Yes you should be able to (as long as your computer didn't ship with lion, if so idk it would prob work though) although be aware it will be MUCH slower than the normal OS. Hope this helps!

  • Snow Leopard or Windows 7 on an External Hard Drive?

    Hello everyone,
    I've been using my MacBook Pro for more than a year now (It's a late 2008 2.8 ghz Inter Core 2 Duo Unibody) and I'm getting a bit annoyed of the fact how slow it had become. I have 150GB free and I'm running a 100GB Windows 7 partition. My question is does Bootcamp actually slows down the performance of the Macbook and is there a chance (and is it worth it) to run Windows 7 or Snow Leopard through a 500 gb Firewire 800 external hard drive? Can you also give me an advice what may be the cause of the whole slowing down process and how to deal with it?
    Thank you in advance,
    Bobby

    People have commented on 10.6.6 running slower on dual boot systems. Some have had much longer boot times. I don't think anyone knows why.
    You can't run Windows on external but you can run Mac OS.
    You can clone OS X easily enough to another drive. SuperDuper #1, or there is CCC and even Disk Utility Restore.
    Best I've seen is use of Hard Drive Manager 2011 from Paragon for "clone OS" of Windows. And they have Boot Camp Support.
    I have OS X and Windows on separate internal drives (thinking of using SSD for each or spring for something larger).
    Does OS X still have 1/3 of available partition free to use?
    Or is it a case of Windows having more free space than needed, and not enough for Mac? Paragon can help resize partitions.

  • Snow Leopard not working after installation

    After successful installation of Snow Leopard on a new internal hard drive (connected through IDE to SATA adapter) in my Macbook (late 2006), it is not working. No icon is clickable, only cursor can move. Please help!

    The OSX 10.6.3 was successfully installed from the DVD. This is the screen after booting. But it is frozen. There is no response to clicking any of the icon in the deck or in the menu bar. I can only move cursor. That's all.

  • I've just upgraded from Snow Leopard to Lion. Installation seemed to go OK but on rebooting it is asking where the System Events app is.  What is it and where is it located?

    I've just upgraded from Snow Leopard to Lion. The installation seemed to go OK but on rebooting it is asking where the System Events app is.  What is it and where is it located?
    Thanks

    If the dialogue appeared once, and you cancelled once, the dialogue may reappear when you next log in. For more certainty I suggest a restart of the operating system, then a log in.
    If you like: immediately after the problem is worked around, open the Console utility to see whether — amongst its view of all messages — there is an obvious sign of what caused the dialogue to appear. (If you see nothing obvious, don't waste too much time looking.)

  • OS 10.6 Snow Leopard and iLife '09 installations disks ejected and not read

    I bought the Mac Box Set intending to upgrade from Tiger 10.4.9 to Snow Leopard 10.6 and iLife '09 and iWork '09. I was able only to install the iWork disc. The other two are ejected without any error message or notice of any sort. The Genius desk was unable to solve the problem. Please help.

    LaoTzim wrote:
    Is it possible that there are certain firmware or OS patches that conflict with SL? How about any third-party apps?
    Any third party OS patch could conflict with running Snow Leopard, & a few could conflict with installing that OS when you start out the installation process by clicking on the "Install Mac OS X" icon while running your Mac normally (IOW, when it has started up from the internal HD), but none should cause the installer disc to be ejected when the Mac is starting up, including when the "Install Mac OS X" application does a restart, which it should do at about 10 to 15 minutes into the normal install process.
    This is because at startup time, no OS has loaded yet -- in fact, part of the startup process involves looking for disks that might contain an OS to start up from, including on DVD's in the optical drive.
    IOW, if you can start up from the installer DVD, it doesn't matter what is on some other disk. If you can't, then either the drive or disc is defective or your firmware (including what is stored in "PRAM") is messed up. You can reset PRAM using the method discussed elsewhere in this thread. As long as any firmware patch came from Apple & was successfully installed, there is very little chance that it is the problem. If it is the problem, there is not much you can do about it besides taking the Mac in for service.

  • Mac OS Snow Leopard and Windows XP Installation

    Recently I got Snow Leopard and I installed it successfully. Then I used Boot Camp Assistant to install Windows XP which also worked fine but when I restarted, by default it was starting in Windows rather than in Mac OS. Secondly, in Windows, I could not see any wireless or internet connections or options for that. Hence I thought of re-installing the OS. When I am trying to do it, first I wanted was to wipe out the Windows partition. To do this, when I wanted to use Boot Camp Assistant, it says, "Update your System Software before using this assistant". Whats this and how to do it? All I want is to just format the whole HDD and reinstall Snow Leopard and then Install Windows XP. But as I could not run Boot Camp Assistant, I cant wipe out the Windows Partition and hence cant move farther. Would one assist me on this?

    If you hold the option key down while starting up the machine, you should be able to choose which partition you want to boot from. But before erasing everything, you may just need to install the drivers for WindowsXP and everything will work. Boot into Windows and then insert your Snow Leopard disc into the drive. It should auto-run the installation of all your drivers and get everything running right for you. Post back if we can assist more!

  • Snow Leopard not booting after installation in rEFIt triple boot system

    Hello,
    I have a Core Duo Mac mini, on which I was successfully using a rEFIt triple boot configuration with
    Leopard, Windows XP and Linux. After installing Snow Leopard on top of Leopard, Snow Leopard boots directly (without rEFIt showing up) the first time after installation. On the following reboots, rEFIt shows up but when selecting Mac OS, the system shows first the grey screen with the Apple icon, then it shows a grey screen with a "no access" icon and does not make any further progress. I reinstalled several times and at last I even removed rEFIt, but Snow Leopard won't boot anyway.
    Can anybody help? Thanks

    Welcome to Apple Discussions!
    I'd post a bug report here:
    http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=161917&atid=821764
    They could probably help isolate your problem.

  • How to re install snow leopard after bad lion installation

    I installed Lion but it's a nightmare I want to re install snow leopard. How can I do this? I have time machine !
    Thanks

    Robert Farthing wrote:
    Switch off your computer, hold down the option key (usually the key between the ctrl and the cmd keys).
    Keeping a finger on the option key, press the start button.
    Keep holding the option key as the computer re-boots.
    Eventually you will be presented with some options on the screen, one of them will be to restore from Time Machine.
    No, you missed a step.  You'll see the Recovery HD as one of the options.  From that, you can reinstall Lion or restore a Lion Time Machine backup.
    But do not use that procedure to restore a Snow Leopard backup;  instead, use the procedure in #14 of Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions.

  • Windows installation from external usb cd rom for portege 2000

    [b]how can i install windows forom an external usb cd rom on my portege 2000

    Hi
    this is a common situation for users without an internal optical drive.
    My main hint is to install from the HDD instead of installing from a CD or DVD.
    How you reach that goal depend on your possibilities.
    The most common solution is to boot the machine into the already installed OS, copy the contents from the install media into a temporary folder on the local harddrive.
    Start the installation from there.
    If you have a clean machine (no OS) then you need to be able to boot from one of the supported devices:
    USB FDD (not USB HDD or USB CD).
    PC Card CD/DVD
    LAN
    BR
    Tom

  • Snow Leopard formats but won't mount exFAT USB stick

    I upgraded my 2009 Mac mini to Snow Leopard this weekend, and applied the 100+ Gb update to 10.6.8.  I plugged in a PATRIOT 64GB USB thumb drive that had been formatted to ExFAT under Windowss 7, but Finder wouldn't mount it.  I launched Disk Utility, and on the Erase tab, is shows the unmounted drive as with an exFAT volume, but also refuses to mount it.  I reformatted it with Disk Utility to exFAT, and it still won't mount it!   Meanwhile Windows 7 mounts the drive no matter which OS formats it.
    What gives?

    I'm not sure I can be of much help except to note that my exFAT drive still mounts just fine, so I don't think there is anything particular about the update.
    A couple of things to try: Use the partition tab to get to Options and set the partition table to mbr or GUID. I believe Windows7 and Vista can boot a GUID PT. I've seen where OS X doesn't like some of the preformatted drives because of the partition table.
    Or, download and install the update combo.

Maybe you are looking for