With the advances in technology, faster data access (SSD), and slimming hardware footprints, legacy technologies are typically the first cuts made to get these devices thinner and lighter while making them more powerful and efficient.

• Rufus

Installing OS X has never really been a particularly difficult task, but try doing that on a MacBook Air or a system with a broken optical drive. Not so easy anymore is it? Even downloading the OS from the Mac App Store wouldn't do when the hard drive needs replacing or the Recovery Partition is corrupt. Luckily, Macs have a couple of options, specifically USB booting, and since most have an SD card slot, we can use those as well.

Creating a USB Installer for Apple OS X 10.7-10.8

Before proceeding, we'll need the following items to complete the process:

• 8GB USB Flash Drive (or SD Card)
• Install OS X Mountain Lion.app (installer downloaded from Mac App Store)
• Apple computer with Mac App Store (OS X 10.6.8+)
• User Account with Administrative privileges

Follow these steps:

1. Using a Mac with at least OS X 10.6.8 installed, access the Mac App Store and download the Lion (10.7) or Mountain Lion (10.8) app installer.

1. Rufus won't make a bootable USB compatible with Mac as it cannot interpret the boot loader (at least not in Mavericks and up). Fat32 can't handle the 5+GB Mavericks image either. Not say you didn't get an older version to work, however, just to keep others from wasting their time.
2. Create bootable USB from iso with run command. First of all, we need iso file of windows to create bootable USB pendrive, which you want to install on your system. We are going to tell the steps for method 1 “ Create Bootable pendrive with Rufus “.

2 When Boot Camp Assistant loads, on the first screen click Continue and then select only the first option which says “Create a Windows 7 or later version install disk. ” and click Continue. If you do not see this option move to the next step, otherwise go to step 8.

2. Insert the USB drive into the Mac and launch Disk Utility.

3. Click on the USB drive from the left-hand menu and select the Partition tab.

4. Click the drop-down menu, selecting 1 partition.

5. Select Mac OS Extended (Journaled) for the format-type from the drop-down menu. (Figure A) 6. Click on the Options button and select the radio button for GUID Partition Table and click OK. (Figure B) 7. Upon completion of the USB formatting, locate Install Mac OS X Mountain Lion.app (downloaded in step #1 to the Applications folder, by default). Right-click the file and select Show Package Contents. (Figure C) 8. Navigate the file structure Contents | Shared Support and drag the InstallESD.dmg file to the desktop. (Figure D)

9. Go back to Disk Utility and click on the newly formatted USB Drive in the menu, then click on the Restore tab.

10. In the Source textbox, click the Image button and select the InstallESD.dmg file on your Desktop. For Destination, drag & drop the partition created on the USB drive onto the textbox. (Figure E) 11. Upon verifying that the fields are correct, click the Restore button and select Erase from the application, if prompted to do so. (Figure F) 12. The process may indicate in excess of one hour, but in my experience the process takes significantly less time to complete. (Figure G)

Creating a USB Installer for Apple OS X 10.5-10.6

The process is nearly identical, with a few alternate items to complete the process:

• 8GB USB Flash Drive (or SD Card)
• Apple OS X Install DVD*
• Apple computer with (OS X 10.5+)
• Built-in or USB Optical Drive
• User account with Administrative access

*Note: Install DVD must be the original DVD from Apple and not a Restore DVD that came with earlier model Apple computers & laptops. The process has not been tested with Restore DVDs and may not yield a reliable, OS X Installer USB.

1. Insert Apple OS X Install DVD into Optical Drive.
2. Launch Disk Utility and click on the OS X Install DVD from the left-hand menu.
3. Click on the Restore tab and verify that the Mac OS X Install DVD appears in the Source text box.
4. Drag & drop the formatted USB drive partition to the Destination textbox. (If you did not format the USB drive, please follow steps #2-6 from the 10.7/10.8 tutorial above) then continue on to step #5 below. (Figure H)
5. Upon verifying that the fields are correct, click the Restore button. Select Erase from the confirmation box, if prompted to do so.
6. If asked to authenticate, enter credentials that have administrator access and click OK to proceed.
7. Since this scenario requires reading data from the optical drive, it may perform slower than reading files that are located on the hard drive.

Once completed, the USB drive will be bootable and have the full installation of OS X on there to install from scratch and update systems, as needed. Remember, this being a writable drive offers some additional perks over read-only media with a few caveats as well.

Pros:

• Include additional resources on the drive that are required by your organization, such as Combo Updaters, applications or settings.
• Backup directories prior to initializing the HDD and/or reinstalling OS X.**
• Include multiple versions of OS X on the same drive.**

Cons:

• Writable means live data can be subject to accidental deletion or corruption.
• Read/Write speeds vary wildly depending on the make/model of the USB drive. Choose the highest read and write speeds for your particular application to minimize this bottleneck.
• Loss/theft of USB drives and any additional data, such as configurations, passwords, etc. that may be contained therein. Be careful!

**Note: Feel free to include any additional files or folders to the existing drives, so long as the original file hierarchy is not modified in any way. This is important as the OS X installer is looking for specific files at specific locations during installation. A missing, modified or corrupt file could result in an unreliable installation.

Multiple OS X versions on the same USB/SD card (Bonus)

While writing this article, I found myself in a predicament - I only had a 8GB USB drive! But luckily, I found a 16GB drive I'd lent my wife awhile back and decided to try to get the two versions of OS X encountered most frequently (10.7 & 10.8) onto the same 16GB USB drive.

And it worked! To achieve this, you'll want to have a USB/SD card capable of holding all the OSs on drive. This means about 8GB of storage space per version of OS X. The steps are identical to the Creating a USB Installer for Apple OS X 10.7-10.8 tutorial listed above, except for two key differences.

1. Instead of selecting '1' partition in step #4, you'll be selecting a number equal to the number of versions of OS X you'll be copying over. (Ex. If housing 10.5/10.6/10.7/10.8; 8GB x 4 versions of OS X = 32GB total; 4 partitions will then need to be created).
2. The copying process (steps #9-12) will now need to be repeated once for each version of OS X being stored.

Tip: By default, Disk Utility names the partition identical to the source 'Mac OS X Install DVD' in my case. While thoughtful, if working with multiple partitions, each will have the same name making them indistinguishable from the others. To resolve this, once the entire copy process has completed for all versions of OS X, the Finder will mount them all on the Desktop. Go through each to identify which version of OS X is contained, then simply rename it to a common name, such as 10.7 for the Lion installer; 10.8 for Mountain Lion, etc. When booting to the USB/SD card by holding the Option key during start-up, the drives will mount with their new names making them easier to identify.

I'm having trouble here because of my PC got infected today and I've tried everything to get it back to normal, but the only option left for me now is to do a clean install.

Now, what happens is that I have MacBook Pro with 8GB USB.

I've downloaded Windows 7 from my college website [With license not pirated] and wanted to make a bootable USB, so I can format my PC to get it working again.

My question is how to create a bootable USB to install Windows on my Mac OS X without using DiskUtilities.

AliAli

6 Answers

OK. Here are some instructions from Gizmodo that will put the ISO onto the flash drive with a Mac... they won't make it bootable though... read on...

1. Open a Terminal (under Utilities)

2. Run diskutil list and determine the device node assigned to your flash media (e.g., /dev/disk2)

3. Run diskutil unmountDisk /dev/diskN (replace N with the disk number from the last command; in the previous example, N would be 2)

4. Execute sudo dd if=/path/to/downloaded.iso of=/dev/diskN bs=1m (replace /path/to/downloaded.iso with the path where the image file is located; for example, ./windows7.iso)

5. Run diskutil eject /dev/diskN, and remove your flash media when the command completes (this can take a few hours on slower drives)

Now... after you read all that, on the Gizmodo page it says that if you want to make it bootable you should use a utility called Live USB helper they link to (which isn't there any more) and use a Mac mounting tool (which isn't there either!) to force the ISO to mount on the Mac so you can copy the files over. So... that article may prove useful, but probably not. I can find other copies of Live USB helper out there, but they are all Windows executables.

One method that will work is to swap the hard drive out of the PC and into the Mac. Put your Windows 7 installation disc into the Mac optical drive, and install Windows 7 on that drive. Once it is up and running (don't worry about drivers yet), follow these steps.

1. Run Command Prompt as administrator
2. Type to Command Prompt: %windir%System32SysprepSysprep.exe, and hit Enter
3. In sysprep dialog that opens, choose “System Cleanup Action” as “Enter System Out-of-Box-Experience (OOBE)”, select “Generalize”, and select “Shutdown Options” as “Shutdown”. Click “OK”
4. Sysprep generalizes now your Windows 7 setup and shuts down your computer.Do not run any other programs during this phase!
5. Remove the drive from your Mac. Put it back into the PC.
6. Boot the PC from sysprep generalized hard disk. You will notice Windows booting as if it was the first boot after installation, installing default and updating registry. One or two reboots are needed, depending on your system specifications
7. When Windows finally boots up, you will need to enter all information as if this really was a new, fresh installation

All that is from here, but it applies in this situation a well, since you would be moving a Windows 7 installation from one computer to another. Considering that trying to make a Windows bootable USB stick with a Mac requires tools that either don't exist any more or are not being developed any more... this second method will most likely prove more dependable.

ScottBon GartBon Gart

Assuming you have burnt your Windows CD into a ISO file with the tools like:
http://burn-osx.sourceforge.net/Pages/English/home.html
1. Jump into a folder here http://sourceforge.net/projects/unetbootin/files/UNetbootin/
2. Get the latest version of zip archive with the keyword 'mac' in the filename.
3. Download and open it up on your Mac OS X desktop.
4. On Unetbootin interface, choose [Diskimage]->[ISO] and then select the Windows ISO file on your local hard drive.
5. Select the right USB Drive and then click [OK] to start writing ISO data onto your USB drive.
Once done, you're ready to boot your computer with this bootable USB drive, like a DVD installation disk.

You could also use VirtualBox on your Mac and install Windows quickly, then use Windows to create the media for the PC. You just need to allow windows to read from the USB port.

Microsoft published free to use Windows virtual machines for Internet Explorer testing purposes, but you can also use them to create a bootable USB stick.

To allow Windows to read from the USB port you'll need to install the VirtualBox Extension Pack. Then you can enable the USB 2.0 (EHCI) Controller in the virtual machine's settings (Ports -> USB).

Then when you insert the USB stick, it will probably first be detected by OS X, and since only one OS at a time can acces the port, you should eject it in OS X. Then it should automatically show up in Windows. If it's not, try to click the USB cable connection icon at the right bottom in the virtual machine. The USB port should be listed there and when you click it it should be mounted.

Then you can use a tool such as Rufus to create a bootable USB stick.

MetaGuruMetaGuru

There is another method that I found myself that is also useful (for someone else too I hope)

If you have Windows installed on your mac like in Parallel or Vmware

You can download those software like Windows 7 USB DVD Download Tool which is from Microsoft website. This will make a bootable for you and you can use it with your PC.

And there are plenty to choose out there, but you still need windows.

AliAli

As none of the answers I found on the internet worked for me, here are the steps that I ended up following.

First of all, brief description of my setup:

• I want to install Windows 7 (32-bit) on a PC (not on a Mac) using a USB removable media (8GB)
• I have an ISO image of the installation DVD
• I want to prepare the USB media on my Mac (OS X 10.10 Yosemite)
• my MacBook Pro only has USB 3.0 ports

What I tried:

• the typical suggestion of using hdiutil to convert ISO to UDRW IMG and then using dd to copy it to the USB. While I did not encounter any errors, the resulting USB media was not bootable.
• using UNetbootin to create the media (supplying Windows installer ISO as custom ISO). While I did not encounter any errors and the resulting USB media seemed to be bootable, it just crashed during boot (started to boot then halted the system, no error).
• using Windows inside VirtualBox to write to the USB stick did not work either, as VirtualBox does not support USB 3.0 yet (I even updated by VirtualBox to 5.0.0 RC1 but still no luck. Maybe newer versions will work)

SOLUTION

As none of the above worked, I ended up first installing Ubuntu and then used that Ubuntu installation (it has GRUB2!) to create a bootable USB stick.

If you search the web for 'windows 7 unetbootin', there are various hits that claim that UNetbootin works fine for installing Windows 7, even though this utility is typically used for installing Linux distributions via USB. You may want to give it a try. UNetbootin is supposed to run on Mac OS X, though I have no direct experience with that.

jjlinjjlin

protected by Community♦Sep 7 '12 at 10:54

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