# [HOWTO] - Make a Mac OS X Utilities Boot CD



## fryke (Nov 23, 2003)

There's a utility called 'Boot CD' which offers just that. You can get it from http://www.charlessoft.com/ - it's free.

The application, once started, asks for the name of the CD, size of the CD-R you're going to write on and the RAM-Disk the booting OS should create.

Then you can add some (not too many) utilities. I usually add Apple's own harddisk utilities, the Terminal application and any harddrive utilities I've bought, such as DiskWarrior, Norton etc.

BootCD then creates a disk image that you can burn either in Toast, DiskCopy (Jaguar) or DiskUtility (Panther).

*ATTENTION: BootCD 0.5.4 is not yet Panther compatible.*

You can then boot from this new CD and use the disk utilities to perform tests & reparation on your harddrive.


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## bobw (Nov 23, 2003)

Carbon Copy Cloner will also make a bootable System Cd.

Disk Utility, in your Utilities Folder, will also make a bootable CD.


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## pedz (Feb 13, 2005)

Bob, could you give more details on how to make a bootable CD with Disk Utility.  I could not find anything in the Help or the menus.


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## bobw (Feb 14, 2005)

You need to use one of the applications mentioned to make a bootable CD.


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## ScottW (Feb 14, 2005)

I used BootCD and it worked fine on Panther, the latest version does. Granted the original post in this thread is over a year old.


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## FLASH1296 (Mar 20, 2005)

Yes, the current version of BootCD is Panther compatible.  A word of warning.  The bootable CD's will require you to hold down the 'C' key upon booting for anywhere from 5 to 15 minutes. YES, you read correctly. Do not assume that you are NOT booting, as you are simply doing so at a glacial pace. It is absurdly easy to over-estimate elapsed time. Take a peek at an (external) clock before you attempt to boot.  Also I suggest that you thorougly read the documentation.  In past versions you had to log in as "root" with a password of "bootcd" but I think that the recent versions are set to auto-login.


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## ljocampo (Apr 25, 2005)

I just read today that the latest version of BootCD breaks 10.3.9 so if your using .9 beware, or at least verify my memory first.


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## Slydude (May 15, 2005)

Before you try anything with Carbon Copy Cloner under Tiger beware. I have seen numerous reports recently that it is not yet Tiger safe. Hopefully that will come son. It's one of my most used utilities


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## fryke (May 23, 2005)

In my experience CCC just doesn't actually _clone_ anything. No harm done. Just needs an update in order to actually run.


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## FLASH1296 (Oct 10, 2005)

I heartily reccomend using "SuperDuper" for your cloning needs.


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## Mikuro (Oct 12, 2005)

Just to keep this thread up to date, the latest version of CCC works fine in Tiger.


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## Randy Singer (Jan 9, 2006)

pedz said:
			
		

> Bob, could you give more details on how to make a bootable CD with Disk Utility.  I could not find anything in the Help or the menus.


I'm not Bob, but since he never responded to your request, I can tell you how to do it.

The Restore tab in Apple's Disk Utility (OS X 10.3 and 10.4, but not 
10.2) works almost exactly like Carbon Copy Cloner.  It makes an exact 
bootable clone of your disk.  The only options are to erase, or to leave 
alone the data on the destination disk, and to do a checksum integrity 
test of the data being copied.  
However, this feature does not offer syncronization of files, to update 
your clone, or any other way to do an incremental backup, other than to create another entire clone of your drive and erase the old clone.

The way you use Disk Utility to create a clone of your drive is to boot 
from the install CD/DVD, launch Disk Utility, select the volume you wish to copy, click on the restore tab, drag the source from the left-hand panel into the source block, drag the target volume into the destination block, and click on the restore button. Disk Utility will copy the source onto the 
destination.  Unfortunately, this takes 2-3 times longer than using CCC 
or SuperDuper.

More info:

http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20031030154346917

http://pinkmutant.com/articles/trouble101.html

http://www.hmug.org/man/8/asr.php


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## bobw (Jan 10, 2006)

To Make a DVD Image of your Tiger disc;

Step 1. Insert the retail Mac OS X Install DVD into your drive. 

Step 2. Launch Disk Utility (Applications > Utilities).

Step 3. In Disk Utility, you will notice a white pane on the left hand side. In the pane, select the Mac OS X Install DVD by clicking on it once. 

Step 4. Click New Image on the Disk Utility toolbar. 

Step 5. A dialog box will appear. Give the new image a name. 'Mac OS X Install'. Select the destination where you wish to save it. Leave Image Format at Compressed (default) and Encryption at None (default). 

Step 6. Click Save to begin creating the image. 

Step 7. Once your image has been created DO NOT mount it. Leave the image alone and proceed to the next section.


Burning the Image

Step 1. Launch Disk Utility (Applications > Utilities).

Step 2. Click Burn on the Disk Utility toolbar (upper left). 

Step 3. Navigate to where you saved the DVD image created in the previous section. Click on the image file, then click the Burn button. Do not drag and drop the image file into Disk Utility during this step. 

Step5. Insert a DVD when prompted and proceed to Burn it. (use good quality media)


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## xris (Mar 14, 2006)

What a mess! 
We are encouraged to upgrade to Tiger for one reason or another. 
Then you find you can no longer do the things you used to do with your current applications/utilities/sharware whatever.

I too found the need to make a bootable CD, 
found/downloaded BootCD and then 
later found out that it doesn't work with Tiger.

NOW WHAT? 

Disk Utilities tells me my HD needs repairing.

The Mac OS supplied with my iMac G5 is 10.3.5
booting from this to do the repair results in an "Invalid Leaf Count" error.
Can't find anything about this in Mac help!!
but eventually I find something (elsewhere) that says that this is a false error report when using Mac OS X10.3 Disk Utility under Tiger.

But I know there is/was a problem
because a few days ago I was greeted with a new dock (all my stuff/additions were missing), my itunes playlist file was gone and one desktop notebook file empty???
I went down the single user path, creating more havoc and problems on the way, unleashed the "hurricane force' fan effect known as error "2FANS5/8/"
Tried the Hardware Test etc etc and after it passed that ran disk utilities again only to re-encounter the "Invalid Leaf Count" error message.

So this Tiger is causing a bit of havoc.

All I can think of is to downgrade to a pre-Tiger OS,
which brings me to my real Q.
Is there a QUICK and SIMPLE way of doing this? 
or do I have to re-install 10.3.5 again and then work upwards?

Then I THINK I should be able to boot off the BootCD, and carry out the necessary disk repairs 
BUT BUT BUT 
I also think the problems re-appear once I upgrade to Tiger again!! 
arrrh!!
suggestions please?


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## g/re/p (Mar 14, 2006)

Did you install Tiger from a full retail version DVD or from an update DVD/CD? (i am not even sure if an upgrade Disk was even released for Tiger)

If you installed from a full retail version Tiger install Disk, you should boot to the Tiger install Disk to repair the HDD - why would you use the Mac OS X 10.3.5 Panther version recovery disks to repair the drive of a mac running  Mac OS X 10.4.x Tiger?


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## xris (Mar 15, 2006)

Not really sure what kind of disk it is.
I purchased it in a legit Mac store in Malaysia last October,

The disk label says 
Mac OS X Tiger
Includes Xcode 2
CPU Drop In DVD
and its about 2.6BG
on loading the disk its' name is Mac OS X Upgrade 

I was under the impression it was an UPGRADE DISK
that's what I recall the salesperson telling me and as a result I've never really tried to boot from it.  
But after this I'll give it a go.

The disk label also says it's part of a hardware bundle and not to be sold separately.

Anyway, I also recall it was much much cheaper than the full retail version.


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## g/re/p (Mar 16, 2006)

Sounds like you may have bought pirated software - but i could be mistaken.

Buy the full retail version of Tiger and install it - that should solve your
problem(s)


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## xris (Mar 16, 2006)

Well you never really know do you!!
anyway I tried booting from it as I said I'd try
and to my big big surprise... I could
so I did the usual stuff and ended up with the final reassuring all clear message.

You know if it wasn't for your question, I was stuck with the thought that I couldn't boot from my tiger disk.
Ofcourse, I look at the whole process as educational, how else would I have spent the time to use/learn about single user mode etc etc, tiger bugs and fixes, but more importantly it brought me to this group.  cheers xris


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## g/re/p (Mar 16, 2006)

Heh - worked out great all around!


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## kirktalon (Mar 25, 2006)

FLASH1296 said:
			
		

> Yes, the current version of BootCD is Panther compatible.  A word of warning.  The bootable CD's will require you to hold down the 'C' key upon booting for anywhere from 5 to 15 minutes. YES, you read correctly. Do not assume that you are NOT booting, as you are simply doing so at a glacial pace. It is absurdly easy to over-estimate elapsed time. Take a peek at an (external) clock before you attempt to boot.  Also I suggest that you thorougly read the documentation.  In past versions you had to log in as "root" with a password of "bootcd" but I think that the recent versions are set to auto-login.




I've made a boot CD from this and it does take a while to start up but once the apple shows up on screen the computer is already committed to starting up from the boot CD or your hard drive. If I remember correctly that happened fairly quickly but from there the little trilling fan thing could go for a while. Should the boot cd not be seen by your Mac you'll quickly revert to whatever was happening with your hard drive.

Last I read Norton will not work with BootCD. Something about Norton not being self contained but throwing components of itself into different parts of the hard drive.


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## ruthan (Jul 28, 2021)

Its old thread, but this is now retro Gaming and i need to make something with my G5 iMac 10.4.

  In text above is that you could make  Boot CD with Carbon copy, i checked whole Carbon copy menu, but i dont see such option here. So its wrong information, or how to do it?


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## Cheryl (Jul 28, 2021)

I do understand why you pulled up a 15 year old thread. But rereading the all of the posts, I only found step by step using Disk Utility. What option are you looking for in Carbon Copy Cloner?


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## ruthan (Jul 28, 2021)

I just need make Carbon Copy bootCD if it is possible, someone claimed that is possible. 
  It would help to avoid annoying iMac replacing original and target disc inside iMac few times during disk cloning process, especially when you are cloning Linux partition too or disk with different size. I managed it, but its complicated process.

   So far, i checked these tools for PPC Mac (10.4, maybe its last one with ClassicOS), maybe there are others.
iPartition - 3.3.1, 3.4.5 is not working on 10.4, can created partition on disk with Linux, its better than Disk Utility, but there are not partition clone option. Maybe bootable disk made on newer 10.5 with 3.4.5 would still work on G5 and it has more features.
Live Linux disc with Gparted for Linux partition cloning and you need to for yaboot.conf editing to adjust it to new disc. You need also place boot flag on Bootstrap partition,otherwise yaboot is complaining about wrong filesystem.
Carbon copy / Super Dumper - good for copy MacOS to need disk.

 BootCD claims to work only 10.3, but again if you have access to older Mac if 10.3, you probably can make boot disk, which would be working with G5 Mac.


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## DeltaMac (Jul 28, 2021)

I suggest that the easiest way to do this is to make your bootable backup on an external hard drive in a Firewire enclosure (more reliable booting from a Firewire drive, compared to USB, which can be challenging.)
That means that you need to have one of those (an external Firewire drive.)
And, unless you do already have a Firewire drive, the choices for those are disappearing quickly.


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## ruthan (Jul 28, 2021)

Hmm, thanks Carbon copy is warning me that USB will not boot, so aware of it and its just feature, so Fireware would be ok, it would help with some swapping but problem is mainly about cloning and partitioning tools.


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## DeltaMac (Jul 28, 2021)

I guess you are wanting a multi-boot drive, with separate partitions for each OS?
Which OS do you want to have on your external boot drive?


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## ruthan (Jul 28, 2021)

Only MacOS + Linux, i know that you have multiple MacOS version, but its not my thing.. I also dont expect miracles and edit of Linux boot loader files with right ids.. But something like resize of MacOS parition when its migrated on smaller disk would be nice, or increase size of MacOS partition without data loss would be nice too, Gparted seems to have only shrink options.

  I also tried some PC tools, but Apple Partition scheme is problem, so far only R-Drive image can make disk image, but it could be returned only to disk with exact same size, so if disk dies its problematic. Even make MacOS partition bootable is problem - iPartition failing with that.. i had to install clean install and after than replace data with Carbon Copy.


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## DeltaMac (Jul 28, 2021)

Best way to do that is to begin with the partitions as the size that you want. After that, you would need to rely on where in the partition scheme your chosen partition to resize happens to be... a first partition, with others following, usually does not allow partition re-sizing, particularly larger. I think it is a design limitation of the macos extended format that used to be the standard Mac format (and is more challenging in some ways with the newer APFS format that Apple uses now, although there are other options that makes resizing less necessary for most uses.)
And, Linux + OS X really relies on how you set up the partitions with whatever bootloader you use with your Linux install.
I think what has worked for me in that past (when I tried Linux a few times, just for fun), is to make your partitions first. Leave the Mac partition alone for now. Install Linux, get that working. Then, install OS X, and set up what you need. Do a quick check to see that the Linux boots and works OK.
Keep in mind that I haven't used Linux, nor installed on anything since about 5 years ago. Just remember what worked for me. I might have been over-thinking that, but I could use both OSes, plus, I had a Windows 10 install at that time, so a 3-way split. As I recall, I was not very successful when trying to boot between all 3 OSes. I had to do a lot of tweaking. Ah, it was just a hobby for me, and nothing too critical.

My main plan these days is, as you seem to know, having multiple Mac systems on one drive. The one that I use commonly has 12 bootable Mac system installers (all different), plus 2 archive partitions, and 3 other partitions with actual full system installs, all bootable. No "foreign" stuff like Windows or Linux, all Mac. I do lots of service and system reinstalls on a wide range of Macs. Nice to have everything I typically might use during the day all on one drive. It's also not a hard drive, but a PCIe m.2 external 500GB SSD. Much smaller than drives I was typically using beyond a couple of years ago.


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## Cheryl (Jul 28, 2021)

DeltaMac said:


> The one that I use commonly has 12 bootable Mac system installers (all different), plus 2 archive partitions, and 3 other partitions with actual full system installs, all bootable.


I am impressed.


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## DeltaMac (Jul 28, 2021)

It's been a hobby of mine, packing more partitions on a drive. And, it became useful since Lion, with Apple making it fairly simple to make a bootable installer, without having to copy from a DVD first. I used to try to make the installer partitions as small as possible, but then Apple started making the installers much larger. It's still very nice to simply plug in one small external SSD, not much larger than a thumb drive, and be able to boot and install Leopard on a 2006 Mac, or, with the same drive, boot and install Big Sur (or Monterey beta) on a brand new M1 mini. It's -- just a hobby (that consumes a lot of time - like any good hobby  )


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