The DVD drive in my MacBook Pro is really flaky. It can read and write video DVDs just fine, but for some reason, it can’t read software DVDs.
So, when I needed to install an OS upgrade, I needed to find another way to do it. I had previously installed some software by putting the disk in my wife’s Mac and then mounting the disk over the network. I read that that method would not work in this case, plus it would probably take forever.
So, I discovered a couple ways that you can install OS X without a working optical drive; both of them require the use of a second computer.
Installing from an external drive
The process is really pretty simple.
If you’re going to do this often, you might want to partition your external hard drive. I made a 10GB partition for Leopard, and another partition for the rest of the drive. If you do partition, click on the “options” button and choose the option that best suits your computer (you can choose different partition types for Intel- and PowerPC-based Macs and Windows-based PCs). If you’re only going to do this once, this step is optional.
Plug in your USB drive and pop the OSX DVD into the working optical drive and then open up Disk Utility (It’s under Applications -> Utilities). You’ll see a list of available disks on the left pane. Click on your external drive and then click on the “restore” tab.
Drag the “Mac OS X Install” disk to the “source” field and drag the disk that has your hard drive’s partition or name to the “destination” field. You want to drag the disk with the name of drive, not the one with the size of your drive.
You can choose the “erase destination” option if you choose. Then click “restore.” Disk Utility will copy the contents of the DVD to the external drive.
When that process is done, connect the drive to the Mac you want to update. I tried running the Installer from the drive, but it didn’t let me. So you may have to restart and use the drive as the start up disk. To do that, restart and as soon as you hear the chime, hold down the “option” key. You’ll see all the drives that are available to start up from. Choose the external drive that you copied the install disk to.
From this point on, the install will be just like it would be if you were installing from the DVD.
Installing from Target Disk Mode
If you don’t have an external drive, you can use Firewire Target Disk Mode to turn another computer’s CD drive into a host. To do this method, shut down both computers and connect them with a Firewire cable. The “source” computer will be the one that you’re reading the install disk from. The “destination” computer is the one that you are installing the software to.
Start up the “source” computer and immediately hold down the “T” key. You’ll see a Firewire symbol bouncing around the screen. Insert the OS X install disk into the “source” computer’s drive.
Now start the “destination” computer and hold down the “option” key when it’s starting up. Now you should be able to choose the OS X Installation DVD from the source drive. The destination computer will startup using that drive and you’re on your way.
Note to Tiger users
Note to Tiger users upgrading to Leopard: When I first tried to install Leopard using the external drive, the installer didn’t see my Mac’s hard drive. I tried everything I could think of to get it to show up. Then I read a tip that suggested just waiting for 10 minutes. I left it sitting there, went and did something else and sure enough, the drive was listed when I came back.
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