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How to get Leopard installer on USB drive?

Hi, Apple newbie here.


So, I've been trying to get an ISO and a DMG of Leopard on a bootable USB to boot my vintage iMac G5.

I've tried this tutorial (youtube.com/watch?v=pxXEnIWJgZ0) and many others online, but nothing seems to boot my iMac. I've tried putting Apple Partition Map, 7.70GB partitions, even using a different format (ISO)! Please help.

Posted on Aug 11, 2021 7:28 PM

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Posted on Aug 11, 2021 7:42 PM

I think as a rule the G series Macs were not USB bootable. There's a couple of posts on the Internet about people being able to do it with some models but generally no. Being able to boot with USB was really a features of Intel Macs. You booted G5s to optical drives for installing or to an external Firewire drive.

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Aug 11, 2021 7:42 PM in response to AxelM2010

I think as a rule the G series Macs were not USB bootable. There's a couple of posts on the Internet about people being able to do it with some models but generally no. Being able to boot with USB was really a features of Intel Macs. You booted G5s to optical drives for installing or to an external Firewire drive.

Aug 11, 2021 7:48 PM in response to Limnos

Apple doesn't even have Snow Leopard anymore. You will have to look on web sites for used computer equipment. If you do buy some, make sure they are black colored retail installer discs. Machine-specific discs (gray color) may not work unless you are lucky and get the right flavor.


It would also be helpful in this instance to know which exact Mac model and year is involved. I don't know about Leopard but sometimes a retail installer disc won't work if a Mac was provided with that major version. For example, retail Snow Leopard was 10.6.3 but some Macs supplied with Snow Leopard took a later 10.6 version and wouldn't boot to retail.


Have a look at https://everymac.com/

to discover the needs of your Mac.

How to get Leopard installer on USB drive?

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