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Installing Mac OS X in a Mac without a disc drive

March 4th, 2008 by Marco Sebastian | No Comments

No, this is not related to the MacBook Air. To install Mac OS X into a MacBook Air is much simpler, as Apple provides its users with an app called “Remote Install Mac OS X.” This app does not work with other Macs as far as I know.

We’re going to try something different, and it’s also rather easy to do. But why do this you might ask? Well, lets say you have a second Mac that does have a disc drive, but it doesn’t work for any reason. You may not want to buy a disc drive for it since you don’t need to. Although you may want to upgrade the computer to the latest Mac OS X.

Hardware Requirements
First you need to make sure both Macs have Firewire ports, and that you have a 6 to 6 pin Firewire cable so you can connect both ends to each Mac. Next, make sure you have a spare Hard Drive lying around. If the Mac with the non-broken disc drive has two Firewire ports, you can use an external Firewire drive. I believe this works with USB drives, but was not able to test it.

Software Requirements

Make sure you have a Mac OS X Install Disc, and download a free utility called Carbon Copy Cloner. Click here.
Now for the fun part
Insert the Mac OS X Install Disc to the Mac with a working disc drive.
Launch Carbon Copy Cloner
Choose the Mac OS X Install Disc as the Source Disk.
Choose the spare Hard Drive as the Target Disk, and leave all settings as they are. Make sure the spare Hard Drive you are using doesn’t have important data, and if it does, back it up somewhere else.
Clone the Mac OS X Install Disc into the Hard Drive by clicking the Clone button and wait until it’s done.
Now you should have an exact copy of that Mac OS X Install Disc in the Hard Drive.
Open the System Preferences and go to Startup Disk.
Select the Hard Drive with the Mac OS X Install Disc clone.
Connect the 6 to 6 pin Firewire cable to both Macs.
Click the Target Disk Mode button in the Startup Disk preferences after you have selected the Hard Drive with the Mac OS X Install Disc clone.
Click Restart when the dialog pops after clicking the Target Disk Mode button.
The Mac will startup in Disk Mode. You will see the drive with the Mac OS X Install clone show up in the other Mac as a drive.
Open the System Preferences on the Mac with the broken Disc Drive, goto Startup Disk. Select the drive with the Mac OS X Install in it and Restart.
Basically what happens is, the Mac with the “working” disc drive turns into a giant drive (Disk Mode). The Mac with the “broken” disc drive will startup from its install drive, and you can install OS X right from it.
Once you’re finished installing OS X, press the start button the Mac with the working drive and it will immediately shutdown. Press it again to do a normal startup. Then you can reformat the drive and do whatever you want.
The other Mac should have a fresh new Mac OS X installed in it. Unplug the Firewire cable and you’re set.

Why did I use this?
Well I have a Mac Pro now, my older computer is a G5, and it doesn’t have a working disc drive. I wanted to do a fresh Mac OS X Leopard install for it, but didn’t want to buy a new drive. So this is what I was able to do, and it worked great. Plus I had a 6 to 6 pin Firewire cable, and a 100GB Hard Drive lying around.

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