Snow leopard on usb drive?

is it possible to install snow leopard on an USB drive?
I want to configure boot camp, but my startup disk is too fragmented, I have a defragmenter but it doesnt work on the startup disk.
so if I would have a temporary installation of snow leopard, I could do it.
also, I have the upgrade disk (that might be a problem) and I lost my leopard disk

robin1232 wrote:
is it possible to install snow leopard on an USB drive?
yes. use e.g. Carbon Copy Cloner to make a bootable clone of your system.

Similar Messages

Install Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard from USB Drive

My MacBook Pro (Late 2006 15.4-inch 2.33 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo) has a SuperDrive that does not work.
I wish to re-install Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, as this is the latest DVD I possess, to wipe the HDD prior to selling. It has Lion installed but this was done via the Mac App store and I don't want to sell with any links to my account or as an authorised computer.
How do I boot the MacBook Pro from a USB stick, wipe the HDD and install Snow Leopard?

You will still need a Mac and a optical drive, a external one will do. To read the disk to put it on a USB, external opticals are not bootable.
http://www.maciverse.com/install-os-x-snow-leopard-from-usb-flash-drive.html
Here is how to remove data off the machine (hold on, extermely paranoid )
How do I securely delete data from the machine?

Can't boot Snow Leopard from USB drive made in Yosemite

Hi all,
I have a brand new macbook pro running Yosemite, but some of the software I have will only run in Snow Leopard.
Running Snow Leopard as a Virtual Machine has been clunky, so I wanted to try an alternative and install Snow Leopard onto an external HD and work from that.
I got hold of the Snow Leopard dmg file and created a bootable USB thumb drive (I did this within Yosemite) to try to install it onto the external HD. I used the instructions here:
http://www.maciverse.com/installing-snow-leopard-onto-an-external-hard-drive.htm l
But when I restart the computer and try and boot from the USB drive, I just get the grey background with dark grey apple symbol, indefinitely. The installation process never commences.
What am I not doing right?
Thanks in advance for any insights.

You can only do what you are trying from a model that can be booted into Snow Leopard. You have a 2014 model that can only be booted by Mavericks or Yosemite. You cannot run Snow Leopard on your machine except in a VM or a Mac from 2010 or earlier.

Boot problem - Snow Leopard on USB flash drive

Built a fresh install of 10.6 on a USB flash drive. The steps I took to do this were:
Installing from 10.6.3 install disc onto an external firewire drive with minimal install option. Drive is hooked into a Mac Pro station
Booted to external drive, installed updates to get to 10.6.8.
Carbon Copy Cloaner the external firewire OS to a 32gb Patriot USB drive
Removed the external drive, then forced the station to boot to the USB drive
The behavior I get is a startup chime, then the grey Apple logo, but NO spinning gear. No other types of signs or symbols come up for roughly 5 minutes. The system then reboots itself and chimes. Then repeat until I hard shutdown and make it boot back to the Mac Pro's internal HDD.
I also tried installing the OS disc directly to the flash drive ( after formatting it ) but it does the same thing. Chime - logo - no gears - reboot.
The drive itself works as I've used it for other purposes and I can see the files on there. The access light is blinking so it appears to be trying to communicate with the computer.
Did I miss a step somewhere?

http://www.maciverse.com/install-os-x-snow-leopard-from-usb-flash-drive.html
https://discussions.apple.com/message/16276201#16276201

Does the Apple Snow Leopard install USB work with any macbook air?

Hi guys and girls,
Im changing the hard drive in my MBA 2008 A1237 from the 80GB HDD to the 64GB SSD. Ive seen a Snow Leopard install usb on ebay for £15 so ive brought it.... but I was wondering if it would actuly work with my particular Air?
As my perivouse exspriance tells me that some install DVDs are tied to cirent products such as my iMac install dvd wont work on my Macbook..
Thanks
Firky

The OS X Lion Thumb Drive isn't being sold by Apple, so you need Snow Leopard. Buy Snow Leopard from Apple and use the USB SuperDrive to do it. Then, open Apple menu > Software Update and install the most recent version. If you don't want to spend more money, stay in Snow Leopard, but if you want Lion, call Apple to purchase Lion > http://support.apple.com/kb/HE57

How to install new reboot drive with Snow Leopard when new drive is unformatted and the only thing displayed is to choose to run the OS disc? It is impossible to choose disk utility as nothing happens.

Mac Pro (2006) running Snow Leopard crashed. Geniuses were certain it was bootable HD. Installed new HD and pressed option key with Snow Leopard in optical drive. Chose "Mac OS Installation Disc." Disc runs once for a minute, stops, runs again, then nothing. It is impossible to choose disk utility to format the disc as absolutely nothing but a black screen is visible!

pull all your drives so you just boot the DVD
If you have an ATI 5770 you cannot boot with less than 10.6.5
Ideally you would go through phone system and buy Lion, download and SAVE and create a Lion Installer media (DVD and flash memory are possible).
If you can't boot the DVD alone, let us know as gives a better idea.

Why can't brand new MacBookPro9,1 (OEM Mountain-Lion) boot from Snow Leopard on external drive, or internal partition?

Why can't brand new MacBookPro9,1 (OEM Mountain-Lion) boot from Snow Leopard on external drive, or internal partition?
Is this because of hardware changes? Or firmware changes? Or is it just and Apple Inc. administrative fiat?

@Steve Holton: Sorry Steve, but you're wrong about that one . I'm using 10.8 (purchased and downloaded) on the internal HD of this MBP8,3 (2.2 GHz, 17"), and I am also able to boot into 10.7.4 and 10.6.8 from external FW800 partitions.
However, I DO have problems with my MBP9,1. It came with 10.7.4 installed and ran fine. Then I purchased and installed 10.8. It ran fine but could no longer boot from 10.7.4 on an external partition. I then reinstalled 10.7.4 on the internal HD and discovered that it is still unable to boot (even 10.7.4) from an external FW800 partition.
One of Apple's Senior Support Advisors has done some remote troubleshooting but the case is still open and unresolved. An earlier Apple Support case suggested that when, I installed the downloaded copy of 10.8, there had been a "firmware update" (behind the scenes) that is now causing the problems with booting from my external partition(s). This apparently is "a bug": it is not what is supposed to happen.
So - I believe - "the problem" really has nothing to do with hardware capability. It is strictly about Apple's strategy for "managing its future customer base". If you don't like it - use something else - I am seriously considering Ubuntu as an alternative.
If there's a hidden caveat in all this it's probably "Read Appple's Licence Agreement VERY Carefully".

Boot MacBook hard drive(Snow Leopard) via USB on MacBook Pro(Leopard)

Recently my old MacBook's (2.0 Core Duo) logic board failed. It was running Snow Leopard and is either on 10.6.3 or 10.6.4 (not sure when I last updated). I would like to remove the 500GB hard drive and use a SATA to USB connector to connect the hard drive to my work MacBook Pro (2.2 Core 2 Duo) running 10.5.8 and use the work laptop to boot the failed MacBook's drive. Before I try this setup, I was hoping to find out if this will work at all or if it could potentially mess up my work computer.
Any help is greatly appreciated. Thanks!

You want to boot your MBP with the MB's HD? Won't hurt to try, but it might not work. Trying won't muck up the MBP. Alternatively, if you're trying to recover stuff from it, you don't have to boot with it, just mount it and transfer stuff, assuming the username & password combo matches. Otherwise, use the Migration Assistant to do the transfer.

Snow Leopard Bootable USB Flash Drive with Lion

I'd like to create a bootable Snow Leopard Flash Drive, after upgrading to Lion. I have multiple Macs with some expensive legacy software and an Apple USB modem (32 bit) I use out in rural areas. I'm assuming this will be a viable solution - is there something I'm overlooking? Has anyone else out there taken this route?
Thank you.

That would have to be a fairly large flash drive in order to install OS X and any PPC aps on it. You'd be much better off installing Snow Leopard on a separate partition on your internal HDD or an external one. (Since you have multiple macs, installing on an external HDD seems to be best.

Need help in installing Snow Leopard without DVD drive

Hi,
I have a White Macbook 2008 model with 2.1 ghz processor and 1 GB Ram. The dvd rom is not working in my machine. It spits out the dvd's 99 out of 100 times.
I need to upgrade from 10.5.8 to 10.6. Apple has sent me a single disk to install snow leopard.
I am not willing to invest in new dvd drive either internal or external. Needed help on ways to install snow leopard please apart from using the dvd option.
I do have a Firewire 400 cable but i do not know anybody anymore who has a mac machine with 400 port.
Hence the cable is also useless and i cannot connect to anyother macbook and do the install using their drive.
Please suggest.
Regards,
Rahul

There are no direct options. Find a friend with a Mac that has a working optical drive. Buy an 8GB USB flash drive. Partition and format it for the Mac then clone the mounted DVD to the flash drive. Take it back to your computer and boot from the flash drive.
Boot Using OPTION key:
1. Restart the computer.
2. Immediately after the chime press and hold down the
"OPTION" key.
3. Release the key when the boot manager appears.
4. Select the disk icon for the flash drive.
5. Click on the arrow button below the icon.

Tiger 10.4.11 to Snow Leopard using USB PENDRIVE Help..!

Dear All;
I have an Intel macbook which had TIGER10.4.11 earlier. As i realised that snow Leopard can be Installed Bypassing "Leopard 10.5" i tried it out but in Vain. please see below;
My Macbooks Internal Optical Drive has Fried as usual & the Install DVD of OS 10.6 is a 10A432 build (which i assume is enough for a SL clean install). connecting a USB External DVD drive i double clicked MAC OS X DVD on Tiger platform and followed the instructions which said to restart,on restart if i remember correctly (no customize options were present)and using Disk utility i erased the Whole internal drive thereby removing Tiger completely.
Restored the "MAC OS X INSTALL DVD" to a new 8 gb hp Pendrive (after formatting in mac os- journaled).
On startup clicked Option > chose USB install > clicked language Tab (Please Note no customize Tab or anything else was present which i assume is the case with all) . It showed "installing mac os x " and then a dialogue appeared saying +"Installation requires that Mac os x 10.5 be already insatlled on computer"+ alongwith two tabs RESTORE FROM BACKUP + Restart. Meanwhile the top menu Bar is inactive and greyed. so i chose "Restore from backup" at which point the top Menu bar becomes active. Using Disk Utility i made sure to frmat teh whole drive again but after quitting it there was no change and installation didnt move further.
Please Tell me is it absolutely necessary to install 10.5 or is it some problem with USB or where else i maybe going wrong.
I would be glad if any of you experts can clearly state the steps to Install Mac OS 10.6 on this macbook (with no OS whatsoever on a clean internal Disk) using only a USB Pendrive.
Thanks much in Advance.

Welcome to Apple Discussions!
Regardless of what you do, you must backup your data at least twice before installing anything*:
http://www.macmaps.com/backup.html
Furthermore, make sure all your software is Snow Leopard compatible in these links:
http://snowleopard.wikidot.com/
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3669
Now as for your installation:
Restored the "MAC OS X INSTALL DVD" to a new 8 gb hp Pendrive (after formatting in mac os- journaled).
You are approaching it the wrong way. Either:
1. Verify the PRAM battery of the Mac in question isn't dead. Sometimes internal "dead" optical drives get revived when the PRAM battery is replaced. Anytime a Mac is over 4 years, the battery might need replacing, and that might fix the optical drive.
2. Connect a bootable optical drive to the Mac and run the installer from it to the hard drive of the Mac. http://www.macsales.com/ has both internal and external optical drives.
3. Have a technician clean the drive and make sure your disc is usable on their computer to verify your problem isn't with your installer disc.
Your pen drive is too small to install the operating system. You'd need a minimum of a 16GB pen drive to install. Furthermore, double check your machine has at least 1 GB of RAM in Apple menu -> About This Mac. 512MB of RAM, or 768MB of RAM won't cut it. If you choose a pen drive method, here's what you must do:
4. Find another Mac of the same vintage and model with a working optical drive. Format a 16 GB pen drive GUID partitioning with Disk Utility. Install the operating system on the pen drive. Boot from the pen drive off the Mac with the bad optical drive, and use a cloning software such as Superduper, to clone Snow Leopard. Mind you this method would require you to erase the hard drive on the Mac. It is best if you just fix the optical drive on the other Mac if you wish to have a chance of preserving your data.
Another thing I realized reading your post:
dialogue appeared saying "Installation requires that Mac os x 10.5 be already insatlled on computer"
If you got that dialog you are using the wrong disc. That disc is only to be used with Macs which shipped 3 weeks prior to Snow Leopard's release to the date of Snow Leopard's release. The $29.95 installer available from the Apple Store has no such limit. Your procedure of restoring I doubt will work with a flash drive. My method might work if you have the correct disc*:
http://www.macmaps.com/bootcd.html
- * Links to my pages may give me compensation.

Start Snow Leopard from USB on a mac mini early 2009

Hi.
It is possible to start Snow Leopard from a USB drive (Pendrive, USB disk, etc)??????
The DVD drive of my mac mini doesn't work properly and I have some problems with my HDD.
Thanks in advance.
BR

Get at least a 16GB USB thumb drive and use this tecnique to make a bootable USB drive:
Borrowed from Kappy,
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. 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 Partition 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.
7. After formatting is complete quit DU and return to the installer. Install Snow Leopard being sure to select the external drive as the target.
Note that you will need a Snow Leopard DVD. The above will only work for you if you can boot your computer from a Snow Leopard DVD. If you have a new model that came with Lion pre-installed then the above will not work because a Snow Leopard retail DVD cannot boot your model.

Use snow Leopard from USB

I updated my iMac to maverick.
Unfortunately some old app don't work anymore.
Is that possible to make an USB drive (flash or hdd) bootable with snow Leopard usable on that drive so I can use again my apps?
What is the procedure to do it and use it?
Thanks

Thank You.
I think Fusion could be the best for me. I have that so i only have to add a new virtual machine for SL.
By the way:
Do You know tthe procedure to install and run SL from USB.
I agree with you: it's not practical but economical.
Thank you

Ever since snow leopard my external drive keeps disconnecting

i love airport base station extreme- it worked well for years. i get snow leopard (which is also great), but- now my external keeps disconnecting. i have it partitioned for time machine as well. but now it keeps disconnecting after five or six minutes. any help?

I am experiencing the same issue. I lost a complete hard drive volume due to this situation. About 2 years of data down the tubes and unrecoverable through Drive Mechanic 3 and other sources.
Please Apple, look into this as I am about ready to downgrade back to Leopard to prevent this. I thought it was my firewire enclosure but it turns out it is doing it with my USB mounted drives as well.
Both drives have been plugged in to external power by the wall plug and not bus powered so that would not be a cause for them to disconnect in terms of the bus powering them down.

Can't boot snow leopard from external drive

I have a copy of snow leopard installed on a separate usb hard drive which I use to run some PowerPC programmes under rosetta. I can attach this USB drive to my Mac Pro and also to an Intel Macbook and choose to start up on this external drive without any issues. However when I try restarting my new 2011 iMac on this external usb drive the machine crashes every time with a kernal panic. Is this problem unique to me or does everyone else have this issue with new iMacs. Mine is a 27" 3.4ghz i& with 12ghb ram installed running 10.72. Is their soemthing I can do to resolve this problem?

I have now solved the problem of being able to boot from either Snow Leopard or Lion on a new Mid 2011 iMac. This is how I did it.
1. Attach an external USB drive to an earlier Mac or borrow one from a friend. In my case I used my 2009 Unibody Macbook (which has Lion installed on it but does allow you to install Snow Leopard on an attached device) Put the Snow Leopard install disc in this machine and tell it to install Snow Leopard on your attached USB Drive.
2. Start up the Macbook (or whatever machine you are using) and get it to restart on the attached USB drive so that it boots up in Snow Leopard. Then when Snow Leopard is up and running on the attached external drive, do a software update to bring it up to 10.68 (the current version). This step is important as I found that if I plugged in the external USB drive into the iMac with only operating system 10.6 installed it would cause a kernal panic on start up when I choose to start up on the external USB drive.
3. With Snow Leopard updated to system 10.68 you can now plug it into your iMac and restart the iMac booting into Snow Leopard from the external USB drive. You do this by either going to System Preferences>Startup disk and choosing the external drive, or by holding down the option key when you restart your Mac and choosing the external USB drive.
4. The next step is to make your iMac dual boot now that you know it can run Snow Leopard successfully from an external USB drive. To do this, go into Utilities>Disk Utility and select your main drive. Select the main disk (with Lion on it) and then choose Partition and choose 2 Partitions. Drag the first partition bundary line down to make the second partition size as small as possible. In my case I had a stock 1TB drive and the smallest partition size it would allow me was 70gb. Create the second partition (assuming you have spare space on your drive to allow this to happen). This will then create a second hard drive icon on your desktop. I renamed mine "Snow Leopard startup".
5. Download the free (and excellent) utility Carbon Copy Cloner and use it to copy your Snow Leopard operating sytem from your attached USB external drive to your new partition.
6. That's it! Now you can choose to start up your iMac from either Lion or Snow Leopard using either method mentioned in 3 above.
7. As a final step I suggest your install your Rosetta only programmes in your new Snow Leopard partition so that you can access them easily and keep them all together.

Snow leopard on usb drive?

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