- Create Usb Boot Disk Mac Os X Mountain Lion
- Make A Bootable Mac Os Usb
- Create Bootable Mac Os Usb
- Create A Bootable Usb Drive For Mac Os X Lion
On every OS X Lion installation a hidden partition is created to enable a method for Lion to be reinstalled on the machine, it is known as the recovery partition or drive and is 650mb in size.
Getting Lion from the App Store is convenient, but if you want a physical copy of the installation, you can easily make your own Lion install DVD or USB drive with Disk Utility. Mar 12, 2020 Connect the USB flash drive or other volume that you're using for the bootable installer. Make sure that it has at least 12GB of available storage and is formatted as Mac OS Extended. Open Terminal, which is in the Utilities folder of your Applications folder. Option 1: Put a full bootable Lion installation on the USB Drive with a recovery partition. What you need: an 8G thumb drive and OS X Lion from the App Store. What you get: A USB stick you can boot off and repair your Lion installation from. Download the Lion installer from Apple App Store.
If you bought a new machine from Apple you have OS X 10.7 already installed – but no back up disk! and since you haven’t bought the OSX Lion 10.7 App from the App store you can’t re-download it – so thats why you have the recovery drive as a partition in your main hard drive and to boot from it you need to restart the machine holding down “command” + “r” keys.
From recovery mode you can run Disk Utility, get online help and do a restore from a Time Machine backup and re-install Lion leaving all your other files intact – it just replaces the core operating system.
You can make a bootable USB drive or disk of the recovery drive, but involves a small trip to the Terminal….
1) Launch Terminal from /Applications/Utilities and run:
The primary drive in this list is No.2 with the “Identifier” of disk0s2, the boot recovery drive is disk0s3
We can also identify the recovery drive by the name and the size – set at 650mb
2) Mount the drive:
Output should be:
Now the Recovery HD is mounted in the Finder and you can see it in the sidebar under Devices
Navigate to it from the sidebar – Recovery HD/com.apple.recovery.boot/BaseSystem.dmg.
Navigate to it from the sidebar – Recovery HD/com.apple.recovery.boot/BaseSystem.dmg.
3) Doubleclick BaseSystem.dmg to mount it also in the sidebar. This will mount the volume ” Mac OSX Base System”
mac-osx-lion-base-system
4) Open Disk Utility in /Applications/Utilities
5) Put in a 2GB+ USB drive, let Disk Utility load it. The USB drive needs to be formatted as Mac OS Extended Journaled, if its not, its time to format it in Disk Utility…
6) Finally in still in Disk Utility, select the “Restore” tab – drag the mounted volume “Mac OSX Base System” into the Source field and drag the USB drive “Volume” (mine is called SuperBootUSBDrive) to the Destination.
restore-volume-osx-usb
7) Click Restore – 25 minutes later – One bootable USB drive
Your bootable USB drive will be called “Mac OS X Base System” after the restore is complete. Now to boot from it just select it as the Start Up disk in System Preferences or hold down option key on boot and select it from the choice of bootable devices.
If you have downloaded the Lion App from the App Store then you can also make a boot disk/drive from this, guide is here, you need to make the boot drive/disk before you install the Lion App, as the installer is deleted after running it. Thats why the guide here can get you out of trouble.
Couple of footnotes on this – Apple has released a knowledgebase article about the recovery partition, also just released from Apple is an app that will do the same as above.
Update For Newer Models – hidden BaseSystem.dmg
If you have the latest models from Apple that came already shipped with OSX 10.7, then you may not have the “BaseSystem.dmg” but instead see a “BaseSystem.chunklist” , the “BaseSystem.dmg” is there it’s just hidden.
To show it so you can see it in the finder – go to Terminal – enter:
Now it will be visible in the Finder.
Related
Here are three different ways to put Lion on a USB thumb drive. If you buy and install Lion from the App Store  it downloads all 3Gigabytes from the App Store, installs Lion, then deletes the installer!  So when you go to install it on another machine it needs another 3Gigabyte download! Here’s how to make a re-usable installer.
![Create Bootable Usb Drive Mac Os X Lion Create Bootable Usb Drive Mac Os X Lion](/uploads/1/2/6/3/126358120/181075105.jpg)
Option 1: Put a full bootable Lion installation on the USB Drive with a recovery partition.
Create Usb Boot Disk Mac Os X Mountain Lion
What you need: an 8G thumb drive and OS X Lion from the App Store.
What you get: A USB stick you can boot off and repair your Lion installation from.
Download the Lion installer from Apple App Store. DO NOT INSTALL IT ONTO YOUR COMPUTER OR THE INSTALLER WILL DELETE ITSELF. MAKE A COPY OF THE INSTALLER. Â If you have already installed it and it has deleted itself, Â go back into the App store and click on ‘purchases’ and next to Lion it will say ‘Installed’. Now option-click on ‘purchases’ and ‘installed’ will change to ‘install’ so that you can re-download the installer.
Format your Thumbdrive using a GUID Partition Table, and ‘ Mac OS Extended (Journaled)’, then you can run the Lion installer and install Lion onto the thumb drive.
More info here:Â http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4718
Option 2: Create a Lion Recovery Disk.
You’ll only need a 4G USB Drive for this option.
What you get: A USB stick you can repair your Lion installation from, but not run Lion from.
If your Macintosh has an existing Lion Recovery partition (this will be the case if Lion came pre-installed on your machine when you purchased your computer from Apple), you can use this method. It will not be a fill installer but it will use the internet to install Lion onto another computer. It involves downloading a program from apple called ‘Lion Recovery Disk Assistant’
![Create a bootable mac os Create a bootable mac os](/uploads/1/2/6/3/126358120/562761842.jpg)
More info here:Â http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1433
To test if you have a Lion recovery partition, Just hold down Command-R during startup and Lion will give you the option of going into recovery mode if the recovery partition is there.
Option 3: Make a Lion Installation USB Thumb drive like the one you buy from Apple.
Make A Bootable Mac Os Usb
What you get: A USB stick you can install Lion from – like the one that comes from Apple.
You’ll need an 8G USB thumbdrive.
Create Bootable Mac Os Usb
1. Purchase and download the Lion Installer via the App store as in Option 1 above.
Create A Bootable Usb Drive For Mac Os X Lion
2. Right-click on the installer and select “Show Package Contents” and find  the file called  “InstallESD.dmg” in the SharedSupport folder.
3. Use Disk Utility to ‘Restore’ this dmg file to a thumb drive to make a Lion Installation USB drive like you buy from the Apple Store. (the thumb drive must first be formatted as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) with GUID Partition Table.)
More info on this here.