Bootable Disk

[eugedunn]

Good Morning to all
I have a Mac OS X (Version 10.5.8).
I would like to make a Bootable CD.
How do i go about doing this.
And could you make it as simple as possible (I'm a simple Person).
I have downloaded a full Bootable version of DiskWarrior, i have tried different ways
but i have not been successful.
Could someone help me out
                                      Thank you for your time
                                                    Plume
                                         

[ben schmidt]

Over the last decade there are have been various utilities and recipes posted to build bootable CDs and DVDs. Each is specific for a version of OS X (e.g. charlessoft.com's BootCD is for OS X 10.3), and each utility/recipe is usually broken by the next major version of OS X.

For folks looking for a simple answer to obtaining a boot DVD -- i.e. folk's not looking for a tinker's challenge -- the simple answer is to:
  a) use the Boot DVD that came with your Mac; or
  b) use a retail OS X DVD; or
  c) use a boot DVD especially created by an 3rd-party OS X Disk Utility vendor.

With the advent of large-capacity USB thumb-drives, an additional option is using the DVD from (a) or (b) to install OS X on a thumb-drive and then booting off of the thumb-drive.

Questions

• Why do you specifically need to boot from a CD/DVD? It's simple to create a bootable external hard-drive. Just use the DVD from (a) or (b) above. Or many folks end up purchasing one or more external hard-drives for back-up purposes. If they clone their files to this external drive using a utility such as Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper, then the external drive is bootable without having to do an explicit OS X install.
• If there is a reason why booting off an external hard-drive or thumb-drive is not suitable for your particular circumstances, are (a) and/or (b) options? You mentioned you had tried (c) but had had problems. What were they? Do you have a license for the appropriate OS X version of Disk Warrior? If yes, have you contacted the vendor for the appropriate boot DVD image file?

[ben schmidt]

As discussed a backup hard-drive cloned from your mac's hard-drive is also bootable if made using Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper, but if anyone is intrigued by the idea of an emergency bootable USB drive, I came across a few step-by-step guides, although not from sites (macs.about.com and maciverse.com) with which I have had any experience.

• Create an Emergency OS X Boot Device Using a USB Flash Drive
  By Tom Nelson, About.com Guide
  - Article is not dated, but discusses how to install OS X 10.5, Leopard (not OS X 10.6, Snow Leopard)
  - recommends a 16GB USB drive so there is lots of room
  - Lists Intel-based Mac as required


• Install & Boot OS X Leopard from a USB Flash Drive
  By Dan, maciverse.com
  - Article is not dated (what is this trend!?), but discusses how to install OS X 10.5 Leopard. There is however a link to Install OS X Snow Leopard from a USB flash drive.
  - recommends at least an 8GB USB drive
  - does not explicitly list an Intel-based Mac as required, although in Step 7, formatting the USB drive, the instructions show the Intel-based-Mac's GUID Partition Table option being selected, rather than the PPC-based Mac's Apple Partition Map option.

 
Note: if you have only Intel-based Macs, life is simple. If however you have both PPC-based and Intel-based Macs, you will need to either create separate boot drives for each.  Or give this Apple Knowledgebase HT2595 a try in order to create a 'Universal' PPC/Intel boot volume: Mac OS X 10.5: Creating and maintaining a bootable "universal" external disk