Help creating a OSX restore/install disk

DraginDime

DraginDime

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Jan 12, 2012
Messages
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So here's the story,
I picked up an older macbook (2010) from a friend a few weeks back. The harddrive in it is dead (clicking). I have a few SSDs laying around, so I figured I'd throw one in it and see how it runs. Problem is, I don't have the factory restore disk for it.

I was able to find a .DMG file for the OS (10.6) so I could reinstall it, but I can't seem to find a program that will let me burn it to a disk. I tried to convert it to an ISO file, which seemed to work, but still ImgBurn won't let me make a disk with it. So I think I need a different burning program.

So question is,
What's a good program for windows to burn DMG disks with,
or
Is it possible to make a bootable USB with OSX on it
or
am I just going at this all wrong?
 
Ask your friend if he still has the factory restore disks?
You anywhere near Louisville or Lexington? You could make a reservation for one of the apple stores there and have them put a clean copy of 10.6 on there for you.
Call applecare and see if they can ship you a restore disc?
 
Archer1212 said:
Ask your friend if he still has the factory restore disks?
You anywhere near Louisville or Lexington? You could make a reservation for one of the apple stores there and have them put a clean copy of 10.6 on there for you.
Call applecare and see if they can ship you a restore disc?
Click to expand...

He has no clue what happened to the disk. He replaced it over a year ago and it was stuffed in a closet collecting dust. So I talked him out of it. I'm about an hour from Lexington. But I don't want to throw over a few bucks at this, so I'll see where I can get on my own first.


Eminence_Front said:
Use DiskMakerX

http://arstechnica.com/apple/2013/1...otable-os-x-10-9-mavericks-usb-install-drive/


Also, all you have to do is hold down the Option key while booting and you'll be able to restore over WiFi.

Will take a while but doable.
Click to expand...

Interesting.....thx I'll give this a shot when I get home today.
 
PCunicorn said:
Are you creating a restore disk in Windows or OS X
Click to expand...

I'm trying to create one in Windows
After reading through the link posted above those instructions are for OS X....so that's probably a no go.
I don't think any of my friends have Macs. Even the guy I got this off of moved to a Windows machine.
About the only other apple product I could easily get access to would be an Ipad :D

I found one program people suggested for accomplishing this PowerISO, but when I installed it, holy hell was it full of shit tons of adware'ish crap. My anti virus started flipping out, I even tried a couple different sites for a clean download and all of them seemed to be the same. So I'll save that as a last resort, if I have to.

I do appreciate all the help so far, everyone.
 
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PCunicorn said:
I'm pretty sure this is gonna work. I'm in a very similar situation and am gonna try it tommorow.

www.acutesystems.com/scrtm.htm
i.stack.imgur.com/TQQ6U.png (for some reason it won't let me embed the image)
Click to expand...

let me know if you have any success. I'm going to pick up some new dual layer DVDs and see if I can get the image I have to burn to a disk. I ran DMGtoISO again and converted the image to an new ISO. It wouldn't let me write it to a USB drive, but maybe I'll have better luck with a dual layer DVD.

EDIT: I went ahead and downloaded that program. It seems to do what I need. It let me format a USB drive for MAC use, I'm going to see if I can put the .dmg image on it and try it when I get home. Thx again
 
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if you got the DMG and have a spare mac, just use diskutility and restore it to a USB stick for faster install . it needs to be atleast 8GB's

otherwise you can just tell it to burn to a dual layer dvd.
 
You can install Mavericks on a 2010 system. If you have access to another mac, it's a free download and there are guides on how to get it on a bootable USB stick.
 
Yeah, I don't have access to another mac. Trying to get it done through windows has been fun. I was able to use the program TransMac that PCunicorn linked above to burn an install disk for my macbook. The program seems to be able to handle .dmg files in windows with no issues.
 
What part of the country to you live in? Maybe one of us can create a USB bootable disk for you if you mail us a USB key.

Total postage wouldn't be more than a few bucks but you would have to wait about a week for the process to happen.

Just an idea if you aren't in that big of a rush to get this done.....
 
turb0 said:
What part of the country to you live in? Maybe one of us can create a USB bootable disk for you if you mail us a USB key.

Total postage wouldn't be more than a few bucks but you would have to wait about a week for the process to happen.

Just an idea if you aren't in that big of a rush to get this done.....
Click to expand...

haha, yeah I had thought about doing that. Just paying someone to make me one and mail it out. I'm in the hills of southeastern Ky. I know every other crack headed hillbilly around here has an iphone or an Ipad, but that's about it.
I think I've got everything figured out now. Going to try to get it working tonight when I get off of work. I will update then.
 
Still pulling my hair out........ I'm pretty sure I have the restore disk created properly (made dvd and usb versions).
I power it on, hold option, it shows the SSD and USB/DVD boot choices. When I select the USB or DVD option, It will pop up an apple logo, then after a few seconds the apple will disappear and it just sits there. I thought, well maybe it's trying to do something and is just slow, so I let it sit overnight and nothing changed. Same white screen with the little spinning circle thing the next morning. Sometimes it shows a "no folder sign" (red circle crossing over a folder) when booted.

On a side note, I did actually get the original hdd to boot one time. it worked for about 15 minutes then died again. While it was up I saw it was running 10.6.8 which is the OSx version I'm trying to put back on it.

I decided to take a break from it for a day or two :) I think I'll fiddle around with some more this evening when I get home.
 
It's a late 2010 Macbook Pro 13".
I think it doesn't.....or if it does, it just isn't working....I've held Command+R at startup and never get any kind of menu.

Would that menu be there with a fresh new SSD installed? Or could it be part of a recovery partition that would be on the original HDD?

oh, and thanks for the responses, I appreciate the help!
 
DraginDime said:
It's a late 2010 Macbook Pro 13".
I think it doesn't.....or if it does, it just isn't working....I've held Command+R at startup and never get any kind of menu.

Would that menu be there with a fresh new SSD installed? Or could it be part of a recovery partition that would be on the original HDD?

oh, and thanks for the responses, I appreciate the help!
Click to expand...

Pretty sure it'd be on the whatever the hell Apple uses (BIOS, UEFI, etc.). It's available as a software updat which the original owner must not have installed (or maybe your MB I just unsupported).

I'm afraid you're gonna need access to a Mac to do the USB stuff.
 
You don't have to do a clean install if you can get that old hard drive to work again.
You can simply copy the hard drive to the SSD and boot from that...you don't even have to install it. You can boot from either one in an enclosure connected via USB and then use something like carboncopycloner to clone the hard drive to the SSD. Then create a new user and delete the old user(s).

if powerISO didn't work for you then try ultraISO or DMG2IMG
although I would suggest making a boot DVD instead of a USB because enough issues exist you'll never be certain you created the USB correctly if you can't get it to work.

But, as someone pointed out earlier, you should be using 10.9 instead of 10.6 anyway.
 
I never was able to get 10.6 to work, that's what it had on it last. But I found an image of 10.8, burnt it to a disk and it seems to be working. But when I went to do a fresh install, it didn't list my SSD to install to. So I went into the disk utility, it wouldn't let me erase/format the SSD. Kept giving an error.

I'm wondering if the ssd is maybe in the wrong format, since it was used as a storage drive in my windows machine for a while. I'm going to play around with it some more when I get home in a couple hours. I'm pretty sure I'm on the verge of getting it back up and running again.
 
if you haven't yet, you can access disk utility from the recovery/install menu. you'll need to remove the partitions you have set up with ntfs and partition it as hfs+ before the volume will show up to install
 
mope54 said:
if you haven't yet, you can access disk utility from the recovery/install menu. you'll need to remove the partitions you have set up with ntfs and partition it as hfs+ before the volume will show up to install
Click to expand...

Will give that a shot, thx for the info
 
I'm almost convinced something else is wrong with this MacBook. Every time I have tried to erase/format the ssd (and/or hdd), it will reboot during the process or just error out and say the drive can't be erased. I took the drives out, wiped them on my windows box, and then tried with them. I finally was able to partition the ssd using the mac. then I went to reinstall OSX and it starts, then at random times, it will just reboot. Then pop up a box that says "something went wrong and your computer rebooted". It happens and random times during install. So I don't think it's an issue with the restore disk I'm using.
It doesn't seem to be overheating or anything. And I have the charger plugged in, so I don't think the battery is causing the reboot.......I'm just lost for now.
 
update: Seems something is wrong with the sata port/cable that the plugs into the SSD...... I used an external adapter through USB and everything loaded fine......
Now to figure out if it's a cable, or something else. I did notice that sometimes it wasn't reading a hdd/ssd was in there at all, but then I would reboot and there it would be.....
 
common enough problem with the 2010 models. shouldn't be more than a $50 dollar fix
 
ah, didn't know it was a common problem. I was hating to put a lot of cash into a cable, if it was a problem with the board. But I found a cable on amazon for $25 so I'll give that a shot.

Thx
 
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