# Make a bootable USB stick



## Matsaki (Apr 15, 2012)

I have a new Crucial M4 SSD HDD, but just found out they have a new firmware to it. The firmware comes an an ISO file and should be burned to a CD to be booted from.

My optical drive is broken, and I was looking for a way to use my USB stick to install the ISO on and install it from there. Is that advisable and how is it done?


Thanks!


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## Dweez (Apr 15, 2012)

Check here.


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## DeltaMac (Apr 15, 2012)

Download your ISO.
Boot your Mac.
Open Disk Utility.
Click the Restore tab, and drag your .iso to the source line.
Drag your flash drive to the destination line, and click restore.
That should make your flash drive bootable to the firmware update, assuming it's a bootable on you Mac model. You get to try it out, eh?


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## Matsaki (Apr 15, 2012)

Thanks for the advice, but something goes wrong?


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## djackmac (Apr 15, 2012)

Matsaki said:


> Thanks for the advice, but something goes wrong?



You need to repartition the usb stick as GUID and reformat it as Mac OS Extended (journaled). Right now it obviously partitioned as MBR and you can see from your picture its the wrong format.


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## DeltaMac (Apr 15, 2012)

Will you get that 'invalid source' error, if the problem is the fat32 destination?
Seems like a good thing to try, however.


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## Matsaki (Apr 15, 2012)

> You need to repartition the usb stick as GUID and reformat it as Mac OS Extended (journaled).



Sorry, bu what do you mean by "repartition as GUIDE"? I have made a format of the USB stick in the Erase part section and chosen OS Extended (journaled). I also tried MS-DOS (FAT) with no success.


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## DeltaMac (Apr 15, 2012)

That's GUID, not GUIDE.
Disk Utility, then click your device (the Kingston line), and then click the Partition tab.
Click the Partition Layout drop down, and choose "1 partition"
click the Options button, and choose GUID Partition table, and click OK. 
Format should be MacOS Extended. The Journaled option is OK, but not necessary here.
Click the Apply button. Should only take a few seconds, and you're done.


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## Matsaki (Apr 15, 2012)

Thanks for the tutorial. I still get 





> Could not validate source - Invalid argument



So I guess there is a problem with the ISO source. Maybe it only works to burn a CD from it for some reason?


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## djackmac (Apr 15, 2012)

Matsaki said:


> Thanks for the tutorial. I still get
> 
> So I guess there is a problem with the ISO source. Maybe it only works to burn a CD from it for some reason?



You now need to convert the .iso to a .dmg. Sorry...missed as the source was an iso. OSX doesn't know what to do with it. It needs to be a .dmg


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## Matsaki (Apr 15, 2012)

I found my old InstallESD.dmg and tried same procedure with that, and it worked. I will take the firmware ISO to a computer with a working CD burner tomorrow just to see if it works then.

Thanks for all the help!


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## Matsaki (Jun 27, 2012)

I found a tutorial to make a bootable USB for this firmware, but for windows. Maybe this can make some sense what I have to do on Mac and what software to use if there are any available?

(It's a firmware update for my SSD hard drive, and my superdrive is broken so I can not burn a CD for the update.)



> Option 2: Create a Bootable USB Drive
> Note: To use this option, your system must support boot from
> USB.
> 1. Start with a newly formatted USB drive (256MB or
> ...


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