disk utility: creating bootable CD/DVD

You can't make such a thing with any application. You can make a bootable clone of your startup disk on an external HD (use CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper for this), which will allow you to boot up from it in order to run utilities for example. Or you can get 3rd party Disk Utilities, like DiskWarrior, that come on a bootable DVD, albeit they're quite slow to boot, but they do the job. You can even make a slimmed down bootable drive on an SD card these days. Techtool Pro can create an E-drive after partitioning your main HD allowing a much faster bootable version of the DVD they supply the application on.

First it is not a trivial question. Bootable CD's and hybrid DVD's (el torito - iso9660) can be created
using hdiutil. Hdiutil is a command line tool only. Burning a bootable cd requires transposing a bootable image file onto a CD, such as a bootable Dos floppy disk image.

Bootable DVD's consist of creating a hfs or hfs+ bootable disk image and then converting it to a
DVD (.cdr) format.

There are many restrictions and rules governing both processes and this forum is probably
not the best place to begin an in depth discussion of this subject due to its complexity.

If you are really interested, then here is an introduction for CD's;
http://www.nu2.nu/bootcd/

There is also a programs for CD management available for OS X;
http://cdrecord.berlios.de/private/cdrecord.html
I compiled cdrtools for my Mac.

For Dvd's:
http://www.index-site.com/bootcd.html
http://www.tuaw.com/2006/07/21/creating-a-bootable-restore-dvd/
http://www.tri-edre.com/english/clonex.html


Kj ♘

Hi Toppo;

Now that everyone has told you why you can't, I would like to ask what did you hope to gain by doing that?

Maybe if you tell us what you are trying to solve with your solution we might be able offer you other methods to do it.

Allan


Message was edited by: Allan Eckert

The biggest problem with running applications from a cd (or DVD) is the fact that that optical
media is "read only". Most apps read and write to disk. Apps won't run if the OS cannot write
to disk. To get around this problem CD creators have to map temporary files/folders to ram
or hard disk.

The easiest way around these obstacles is to load a bare bones bootable copy of your OS and apps
on a piece of read/write media such as a thumb drive or an external drive.

Kj ♘