Install OS X from DMG File

Contributor Icon Contributed by davak Date Icon October 10, 2007  
Tag Icon Tagged: Apple Mac

Installing OS X from a DMG file can be difficult. With leopard testing and development, many people are having troubles installing from the supplied binary. Here is how it can be accomplished.


Installing OS X from a dmg file format instead of a DVD/CD format seems challenging. Here is how it can be accomplished.

1. Burn it to Dual Layer DVD

OS X is too large to fit on a single layer DVD; however, many macbooks support burning dual layer DVDs. The media is expensive, but for many people this is the easiest option.

Burn it and reboot to it. The OS X will install.

2. Restore the dmg file to an external device

An external hard drive or an iPod in hard disk mode will serve as an excellent booting device as well.

– Copy your dmg file to your current apple desktop.
– In the Utilities Folder in your Applications Folder select Disk Utility
– Select your external device in the left column of the utility
– Click the Restore button
– Drag your dmg to your Source textbox
– Drag your device from the left column to the Destination textbox
– Click the Restore

You will lose any information you have in your external device in this process. After the dmg is restored to the external device, change your boot disk to this device and reboot.

Dragging the source and destination files can be a little confusing. Click the picture below for a larger version.



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  • Anonymous
    Hi there,

    I have a problem trying to setup the dmg.

    I did what did article said. However, Once I open Startup Disk, I cannot see my USB HD with the Mac OS X Leopard...I only can see a folder with Mac OS X 10.4 and Network Startup.

    Did I do something wrong?

    I have a PPC G5 Dual 2GHz and 2 HD + this USB HD I want to use for the Leopard installation.

    Your help could be very useful!! thanks!!

    Vic
  • Alessandro
    Thank you very much... ehm It's true: nobody think to the simplest things! :-)
  • ali
    you said that i must Copy my dmg file to my current apple desktop , but what i must do if my disk was formated
  • You will have to use another computer to either burn the dmg to a DVD or an external hard drive.
  • Nick
    I’m having a bit of a problem, maybe you will be able to help.

    I have two hdds installed and a dmg of leopard.

    I go into the disk utility, and try to use the restore feature with no luck.

    I get either an error one, or an error 16, both telling me the copy failed.

    Today, I purchased a 500gb firewire drive to try to get it to work. No luck, same error.

    When I try to do the same think on my macbook, (I am trying to install leopard on my powermac running osx 10.3 )
    When I do it on my macbook, it begins to copy files, and works for several minutes, and then I get an error stating: could not restore, operation not supported.

    What am I doing wrong? Any insight?

    I have a dl burner available to me.

    I have my original osx leopard install disks that came with my macbook.

    Any suggestions?
  • qdideas
    Sounds like your DMG of leopard is corrupted.
  • Ryan
    Hey, I have a question.

    If I restore the dmg to an external device, will I still be able to use that device? I mean, will it be able to do it's intended purpose once this is all said and done?

    I'm only asking because I was going to use my digital 8-track recorder as the device, but I want to still be able to record my music with it after. Restoring a dmg to it isn't going to make it inoperable afterwards, will it?

    Thanks for any help
  • James
    I think you can later use the erase in disk utlity to reformat it again
  • shafique
    plz send me how i can dow dmg to osx fils
  • sallyfingers
    You may need to use HTS (Mac OS) file system format for this to work. I tried using FAT and had errors. Then obviously realized that FAT cannot support files over 2GB. I reformatted to HTS and rock on....
  • Something different when restoring the Snow Leopard DMG to a flash disk.

    You need to mount the dmg 1st, then use disk utility to restore the actual Mac OS X Install DVD (inside the DMG) to the flash disk, instead of specifying the DMG as source.

    Then the 8G USB flash disk is loaded with Snow Leopard bootable, I think it's just UNIX command dd? Keep pressing option key until you see the option to choose the boot device;-)
  • InDaWild
    The program that does it is named "diskimages-helper", not "dd". I guessed it was "dd" myself, but after I examined the process a bit, I saw that it's not :)

    It's good to know that restoring to a USB Flash Drive will take more time, so be patient!

    Thanks for the tip - I, like many others, couldn't see the obvious...
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