- Plug in the USB drive and open disk utility. Restore the USB drive using the InstallESD.dmg on the USB drive. Restart and boot from the USB Drive. Jan 29, 2019 How to Boot a Mac from USB Drive. CD/DVD drives are disappearing from computers, leaving USB storage as the only option when re-installing an operating system.
- In Disk Utility, select InstallESD.dmg in the sidebar Click the Burn button in the toolbar. When prompted, insert a blank DVD (a single-layer disc should work, although you can use a dual-layer.
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To create a bootable USB drive from a DMG file on Windows, you will need to have the right utility. That's because DMG is not native on Windows. It is the Mac equivalent of an ISO file that has been in use since Apple transitioned from the IMG format with Mac OS X. The other major reason to want a bootable Lion installer is for emergency booting and repair of. To create a bootable USB drive from a DMG file on Windows, you will need to have the right utility. That's because DMG is not native on Windows.
DMG file is a compressed file format being used widely on Mac computer. Windows OS doesn't natively support DMG disk image files, so if you need to create a bootable USB drive from a DMG file, mostly for bootable Mac OS X or macOS installation USB, you need a special utility to help you complete the task.
There is also the possibility of converting the file into a format more suitable for Windows, which is the ISO file format for disk images. Considering the above, let's look at different ways to create a bootable drive from a DMG file on a Windows computer.
Part 1: Convert DMG to ISO and Make Bootable USB from ISO
Since Windows doesn't offer native support for DMG files, you can first convert the file to ISO. Why? A lot of easier to find an app for making a bootable USB from ISO file. The easy way to do this is to use Command Prompt. Don't be intimidated by the non-GUI environment even if you don't have any experience. If you follow the steps below, you can convert any DMG file to ISO and then create a bootable USB using the converted file.
Step 1: Open Command Prompt by typing cmd in the Run windows and hitting Enter.
Step 2: In the command interface, go to the directory in which the DMG file is saved. You can do this by using the 'cd' command followed by the file path, then pressing Enter. For example, if your disk image is in D: and Command Prompt is currently in 'C:', then type 'd:' (no quotes) and press Enter. If it is in a subfolder, type 'cd subfolder', and so on.
Step 3: Use the following command to convert the DMG file to ISO:
hdiutil convert /path/sourceimagefile.dmg -format UDTO -o /path/targetmage.iso
Step 4: Once the ISO file has been created, you can use a burning tool to create the bootable USB drive. To do that, continue with this guide.
Cons:
- File damged or broken after conversion.
- Failed booting from burned USB disk.
- May not work with the latest DMG file.
- Complex and take more time.
Part 2: Create Mac OS X Bootable USB Installer from DMG
Androidphonesoft DMG Editor is a powerful software application for Windows that will allow you to manage the non-native DMG format even if you have no experience. The interface is uncluttered, and you can even use the tool to view files, extract them, edit the DMG and even copy it to a disk. The burn function has one of the highest success rates in the industry, which makes this an ideal utility for our purpose.
Created by the talented team of developers at Androidphonesoft, DMG Editor is currently the most intuitive Windows app for handling Apple's disk image format. Each of its functions have been tested on various Windows versions, with different types of DMG files and on different PC brands. This thorough testing means no wasted DVDs or corrupted files. As long as your DMG file is in good shape, you can directly create a bootable disk.
Step 1 Install DMG Editor
Download and install DMG Editor on your Windows PC.
Step 2 Plug in USB Drive
Launch the application and click on the 'Burn' section. You will also see other modules such as Edit, Extract.
Step 3 Load DMG File
Now import the DMG file by clicking the 'Browse' button and choose the USB drive name.
Step 4 Start Burning DMG to USB Drive
Click 'Burn' button at the bottom of window to start burning DMG file to USB drive. Once it get started, it displays a progress bar and you have to wait for the task to be finished. Usually, it takes 20 minutes depending on how large the file is.
In a few moments, your bootable USB flash drive will be ready for use. Since you haven't done any conversion, you can use this directly on a Mac for program installation, which you cannot do with the first method.
Part 3: Create Bootable USB from DMG in Windows Via PowerISO
Another well-known disk image utility is PowerISO. Apart from being ideal for burning ISO files, it can also burn a DMG file to USB to create a bootable drive. There are some settings that you have to keep in mind when burning with this software, but it's easy to get the hang of it once you do it a couple of times.
Step 1: Download PowerISO and install it in your Windows PC. Launch the app and insert a USB drive into a free USB slot in your computer.
Step 2: You can import the DMG file directly by clicking on ‘Burn' in the toolbar or going to Tools >Burn. In the Burn window, select the DMG file from the Source File section.
Step 3:Now review the settings to select the burn speed. The default will be the maximum your hardware can handle, so you can reduce that. You can also choose to finalize the disk and verify it. Finalizing means you can't save any more files on the drive, but it primarily applies to DVDs and CDs. Choosing ‘Verify' will prompt the software to execute an additional process after the burning is done. Any errors in the bootable USB will show up at that point.
Step 4: Now click on 'Burn' and wait for the progress bar to reach 100%. Your bootable USB is now ready.
Cons:
- Expensive for a single license.
- Higher failure rate for bootable device.
- Ugly user interface.
Bootable Lion Usb From Dmg Tool
The Bottom Line:
The second two methods are recommended if you don't have much experience working with DMG files, but DMG Editor will appeal to novices and experts alike. The clean interface and minimal user input means a lower chance of errors while creating the bootable media.
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Bootable Lion Usb From Dmg Download
[Editor’s note: This article is part of our series of articles on installing and upgrading to Lion (OS X 10.7). We also have a complete guide to installing and upgrading to Mountain Lion (OS X 10.8).]
Unlike previous versions of Mac OS X, Lion (OS X 10.7) doesn’t ship on a bootable disc—it’s available only as an installer app downloadable from the Mac App Store, and that installer doesn’t require a bootable installation disc. Indeed, this lack of physical media is perhaps the biggest complaint about Lion’s App Store-only distribution, as there are a good number of reasons you might want a bootable Lion installer, whether it be a DVD, a thumb drive, or an external hard drive.
For example, if you want to install Lion on multiple Macs, a bootable installer drive can be more convenient than downloading or copying the entire Lion installer to each computer. Also, if your Mac is experiencing problems, a bootable installer drive makes a handy emergency disk. (Lion features a new recovery mode (also called Lion Recovery), but not all installations of Lion get it—and if your Mac’s drive is itself having trouble, recovery mode may not even be available. Also, if you need to reinstall Lion, recovery mode requires you to download the entire 4GB Lion installer again.) Finally, a bootable installer drive makes it easier to install Lion over Leopard (assuming you have the license to do so).
Thankfully, it’s easy to create a bootable Lion-install volume from the Lion installer that you download from the Mac App Store; just follow the steps below.
Update: When this article was originally published, the Mac App Store version of Lion would not boot any Macs released in mid-2011 or later, as those models shipped with a newer version of Lion preinstalled. However, unlike with the CD- and DVD-based Mac OS X installers of old, Apple can—and does—update the Mac App Store version of the Lion installer. So if you create a bootable Lion-installer drive using the current version of the Lion installer—which, as of 2/10/2012, installs OS X 10.7.3—that drive will work with all current Lion-capable Macs. If your only Mac was released after Lion, so you can’t download the Lion installer from the Mac App Store, I’ve also provided instructions for creating a bootable Lion-install drive for newer Macs.
Part 1: For all types of media
- Once you’ve purchased Lion, find the Lion installer on your Mac. It’s called Install Mac OS X Lion.app and it should have been downloaded to
/Applications
. - Right-click (or Control+click) the installer, and choose Show Package Contents from the resulting contextual menu.
- In the folder that appears, open Contents, then open Shared Support; you’ll see a disk-image file called InstallESD.dmg.
- Launch Disk Utility (in
/Applications/Utilities
). - Drag the InstallESD.dmg disk image into Disk Utility’s left-hand sidebar.
The next steps depend on whether you want to create a bootable hard drive or flash drive, or a bootable DVD. I recommend a hard drive or flash drive—a DVD will work, but it takes a long time to boot and install.
To create a bootable hard drive or flash drive
- In Disk Utility, select InstallESD.dmg in the sidebar, and then click the Open button in the toolbar. This mounts the disk image’s volume in the Finder. The mounted volume is called Mac OS X Install ESD.
- Click Mac OS X Install ESD in Disk Utility’s sidebar, then click the Restore button in the main part of the window.
- Drag the Mac OS X Install ESD icon into the Source field on the right (if it isn’t already there).
- Connect to your Mac the hard drive or flash drive you want to use for your bootable Lion installer. This drive must be at least 5GB in size (an 8GB flash drive works well), and it must be formatted with a GUID Partition Table. Follow Steps 1 through 4 in this slideshow to properly format the drive.
- In Disk Utility, find this destination drive in the sidebar and then drag it into the Destination field on the right; if the destination drive has multiple partitions, just drag the partition you want to use as your bootable installer volume. Warning: The next step will erase the destination drive or partition, so make sure it doesn’t contain any valuable data.
- Click Restore and, if prompted, enter an admin-level username and password. The restore procedure will take anywhere from five to 15 minutes, depending on your Mac and the speed of your drive.
Note: In versions of the Lion installer prior to 10.7.4, you didn’t need to first mount the InstallESD.dmg image—you could simply drag the image itself into the Source field. However, with the 10.7.4 installer, you must use the mounted Mac OS X Install ESD volume or you will get an error at the end of the restore procedure and the newly created bootable drive may not function properly.
Part 2b: To create a bootable DVD
Bootable Lion Usb From Dmg Software
In Disk Utility, select InstallESD.dmg in the sidebar
Click the Burn button in the toolbar.
When prompted, insert a blank DVD (a single-layer disc should work, although you can use a dual-layer disc instead), choose your burn options, and click Burn.
Bootable Lion Usb From Dmg File
You can now boot any Lion-compatible Mac from this drive or DVD and install Lion. You can also use any of the Lion installer’s special recovery and restore features—in fact, when you boot from this drive or DVD, you’ll see the same Mac OS X Utilities screen you get when you boot into restore mode.
Note: As explained in our main Lion-installation article, if you leave the Lion installer in its default location (in /Applications
) and use it to install Lion on your Mac’s startup drive, the installer will be automatically deleted after the installation finishes. So if you plan to use that installer on other Macs, or to create a bootable disc or drive as explained here, be sure to copy the installer to another drive—or at least move it out of the Applications folder—before you install. If you don’t, you’ll have to re-download the entire thing from the Mac App Store.
If you’ve already installed Lion—so it’s too late to move the installer—you’ve may find that the Mac App Store claims that Lion is already installed and prevents you from downloading it again. As I explained in our main Lion-installation article, you should be able to force a re-download using one of the following three tricks: First, Option+click the Buy App button in the Mac App Store. If that doesn’t work, switch to the Mac App Store’s main page and then Option+click the Purchases button in the toolbar. If that doesn’t work, quit the Mac App Store app and then hold down the Option key while launching the Mac App Store again. One of these three procedures should get rid of the “Installed” status for Lion and let you download it. Update: Apple appears to have recently made this process easier: If you previously purchased Lion from the Mac App Store, the button next to Lion in the Store should simply say Download—click it to re-download the installer.
Create Bootable Lion Usb From Dmg
Updated 7/20/2011, 10am, to add note about moving the Lion installer package to prevent it from being deleted.
Updated 7/22/2011, 11:10am, to add instructions for forcing a re-download of the Lion installer, if necessary.
Updated 8/8/2011, 9:19am, with additional information about thumb-drive capacity and drive format.
Updated 8/19/2011, 2pm, to clarify compatibility.
Bootable Lion Usb From Dmg Download
Updated 2/10/2012, 12pm, with information about compatibility when using the latest Lion installer, and to note easier re-downloading of Lion installer.
Bootable Lion Usb From Dmg Software
Updated 6/27/2012, 9pm, to add note about Disk Utility error message introduced with the 10.7.4 installer, and 6/29/2012, 8:20am, to update instructions so they work when creating a drive using the 10.7.4 installer.