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I'm on a Intel Mac (desktop) which has a broken CD drive. Is there any way to install without buying an external CD drive?
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I'm on a Intel Mac (desktop) which has a broken CD drive. Is there any way to install without buying an external CD drive?
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I just had this exact same problem. A lot of people have been suggesting to use an external hard drive to put the Snow Leopard installation media on. This can be slow (eww, USB), and not everyone has a large enough external drive.
All I did was re-size the hard drive inside my Macbook to create another, smaller partition (10GB) and put the Snow Leopard installation files on there. Here's how:
Press the + (plus) to create a new partition. The size of this new partition should be 10GB, it should be formatted with 'Mac OS Extended (Journaled)' and the name should be something snazzy like "Snow Leopard Installer". All up, it should look like this:
Make sure "Erase Destination" is checked. It should look like this:
1Where does the Snow Leopard dmg come from? – alimack – 2010-04-26T09:16:17.123
@alimack: You can obtain it from various sources, of various levels of legality. You could create a .dmg from the DVD using Disk Utility from another Mac, and transfer it across. – Josh Hunt – 2010-04-26T10:35:56.750
1Very nice and detailed answer, but it does not solve the actual problem. How does he do this without a working optical drive and without plugging one in? :p – Nippysaurus – 2009-09-04T06:34:16.203
3It does solve the answer. I don't have the CD and I installed Snow Leopard this way. My answer is pretty much the same (at a basic level) as the other answers. – Josh Hunt – 2009-09-04T08:18:00.503
Of note, live partitioning came about in Disk Utility with Leopard and is not available in Disk Utility in Tiger. – Chealion – 2009-10-24T05:15:57.647
When I try this, it tells me the re-partitioning process removes all data from the existing volume. That seems kinda inconvenient, given that the volume contains my operating system. – Der Hochstapler – 2014-03-12T11:27:39.817
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You either have to go out of your way (removing hard disk, risky downloading) or spend some money (external drive, or get yours fixed). Unfortunately there is no solution which will be cheap AND easy.
Actually, see this question that I asked about pretty much the EXACT same issue http://superuser.com/questions/34867/is-it-illegal-to-download-from-torrents-software-that-you-have-already-legally
– Josh Hunt – 2009-09-04T08:20:33.853Well, going the torrenting route, one can compare the SHA1/MD5 sums and ensure that they match a disk image of a legitimate CD. – lfaraone – 2009-09-05T03:13:58.693
1As disucssed at that question, downloading the .dmg via torrent is illegal because you are also uploading the torrent when downloading, ergo, you are sharing files you don't have a right to. – Josh Hunt – 2009-09-06T03:21:42.420
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If you have access to an external USB or Firewire hard drive and another computer that does have a working CD drive, you could use the other computer to clone the Leopard CD onto the external drive, and install from there.
I'm not using a Macbook Air, but on a normal Mac with a borked CD drive, btw.
Your answer still looks like it'd work, however. – lfaraone – 2009-09-05T03:13:03.517
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What Mac do you have? Target Disk Mode only works on Macs that have FireWire, meaning some MacBooks and the MacBook Air can not handle TDM. I've edited your question to reflect this. – Chealion – 2009-09-03T17:19:53.477