How do I make a bootable backup install disc?

sgould

sgould

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I have a full retail install disc - family pack.

I want to copy this so that I can keep the original at home and carry a copy with both my wife's and my own laptop for emergency use.

First question is "Is this legal?" If not, I'll forget it

I made a straight copy and tried the install on her laptop to test it out, but it won't start the process. All the data seems to be there as the two are the same size. What do I need to do to get it working as a bootable disc? Carbon Copy Cloner? Disc Image? Or just a setting?
 
I haven't tried creating a bootable dvd with 10.6, but experimented with 10.5 for a while and never could get it to work. But regardless, in the shop I have an internal 2.5" drive in an external enclosure partitioned with retail 10.4, 10.5, and 10.6 installers. Boots any machine and installs an OS in half the time that it takes with DVD. Just partition and external HD and do a disk utility restore using the disk as the source and your external HD as the destination. Of course to do this legally buy the family pack which will give you 5 licenses. I also saw an article where someone made a bootable SD card for a MBP.
 
I've done this with every OS X release since 10.0 with 100% success.

1) Insert the master retail copy of the OS X Install CD/DVD.
2) Open Disk Utility.
3) Highlight the OS X Install volume (not the CD/DVD device, but the partition that says "Mac OS X Install" or whatever.
4) Choose File > New > Disk Image from "Mac OS X Install" (or whatever the volume name is).
5) Choose "DVD/CD Master" for "Image Format", "none" for "Encryption", and choose a filename and location to save the image to.
6) Choose "Save".

Sit back and wait. When it's done, you can make a bootable disk by dragging the image you made into Disk Utility's left-hand sidebar and highlighting it, inserting a blank CD-R or DVD-R, and clicking "Burn."

If that process does not work, the first thing I would suspect is the quality of CD or DVD media in use, but this should produce a bit-for-bit, bootable copy of the OS X Install CD/DVD, no matter what version.

Bear in mind that if a machine won't boot from the "master" OS X Install CD/DVD, then it will not boot from a copy... for example, a brand-new MacBook Pro that ships with 10.6.2 will NOT boot from a Family Pack OS X Install that is version 10.6, and, therefore, will not boot from a copy of the Family Pack OS X Install either. Ensure that each computer can boot from the master before blaming the copy as unbootable.
 
Burnt two discs from the disc image in Disk Utility.

Worked a treat! I now have two backup discs. Checked and working :)

Thanks!
 
Have you checked whether this process includes the BootCamp partition? I'm never quite sure whether the CD/DVD-Master or the .dmg is the right thing to do - or whether the device or the volume should be selected. A copy _without_ the BC partition can still reinstall your Mac, but you won't have the drivers required for Windows to work properly. I *though* you'd have to choose the _device_ and let it do a .dmg instead of a .cdr file.
 
I may have confused a bit here!

The copies were for 10.5 on our two old G4 ibooks.

We run a 2007 Intel MacMini as the desktop and I use a MacBook of similar age for general work. Both on 10.6.2.

However my wife has taken redundancy and given back her company Windows laptop, so she has resurrected the old iBook for personal use.

We have another old iBook that we have decided to use as a "disposable" to take on holiday with us and leave in more risky places - like hotels. This second iBook is now being stripped of all data and is being rebuilt with no confidential info on it (hopefully). I use the Quickertek wi-fi unit on this machine as the original airport card is broken.

I had great difficulty getting hold of a reasonable retail copy of the 10.5, eventually tracked down a family pack of 10.5.6. Made the .cdr disc as described above - it needed to be a double layer one for the size - and all has gone well! :) Now upgraded to 10.5.8 with all the other bits from Software Upgrade.

It was interesting to note that Software Upgrade offered the full Combo Upgrade straight away for the system and not the 10.5.7 then later a 10.5.8. But the other stuff took three runs through Software Upgrade before it all downloaded and I got the "up to date" message at the fourth attempt.
 
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