Mavericks Install DVD

For Audio & Multimedia production users the idea of having to download your OS & Apps everytime your system needs a clean out is just insane! Apple are going to loose a lot of users over this & rightly so. The App store is unreliable at best & downloading software like Logic pro X is completely impractical for most users. This is the beginning of the end for Apple, dumb move, really dumb move.

The simplest way, and safest way, as mentioned is to download Mavericks once, copy it to a flash drive and use that one flash drive to install the OSX download on all other computers. Use a few flash drives if you wish.

Cheers

Pete

Thank you!

I followed the DVD instructions, but when I mount the .iso and launch the installer app it aborts with a message that "this is not a supported way to install OS X". I tried to boot a VM off the iso under Parallels 9, but that never got beyond a black screen.

Are these "normal" observations, to be expected - or would I ruin a perfectly good DVD if I burned the iso?

As to the whole optical disk debate: I prefer to use opticals for this kind of installer. They're cheaper than thumb drives (at least here in France), probably more reliable, and they don't have that temptation factor when you're in urgent need of some external storage ...

I'm pretty sure the superdrive in my MBP will outlast the laptop itself, are there enclosures that I could put it into when the time comes?

(to think I gave away a perfectly good external FW dual-layer DVD burner just because it was too voluminous for the new place I moved into...)

But the purpose of making the iso file is just to burn it to dvd. It is not meant for any other purpose.

If you are just trying to make a virtual machine of mavericks in parallels, you just drag the .app file you downloaded from the mac app store into parallels which then makes its own bootable dmg file of it and then you can install the virtual machine with the dmg file that parallels created.

I have made a bootable dvd from the iso and have tested it out. It works but just be aware that it is much slower to boot than from a usb.

Well, Paralllels exposes disk images like an actual disk to the guest if you ask it to, so in theory it should boot off it (I've installed numerous Linux VMs that way, with a downloaded iso).

Anyway, I'm feeling very stupid - my old Toast copy doesn't recognise the .iso, and when I right-clicked it to select the Burn command, I ended up with a copy of the .iso on a DVD (that's ripe for the trash bin now). What couldhave gone wrong?!

Burn the dvd with disk utility, not toast as per my original instructions.

I just hope you haven't corrupted the iso file with all the other stuff you've done to it.

I've done nothing *to* the .iso, only done things with it. Anyway, I burned the DVD as per your instructions, but it doesn't seem to want to boot. Are your sure there isn't something like a "bless" to do on the sparseimage before converting it?

I also used the app store's updater app to update an external clone of my hdd. Can't say the update process has improved; earlier versions proposed to do a clean install or an upgrade and IIRC didn't require to reboot the machine if you weren't installing to your boot disk. But I was most disappointed by the fact that after logging in the machine immediately started to make a local TM backup without asking permission first ... after more than 30 minutes staring at the "Setting up" spinner I logged in over ssh (whew, that worked), disabled local TM backups, and then (again 30min later) did a shutdown because something was still setting up. Bummer ...

I wouldn't have posted the instructions if they didn't work.

I made my own bootable dvd with it and tested it out and installed mavericks successfully from it. It takes a long time to boot up though. Like 20 minutes or so. That's why I said before that a bootable usb is better.

Also if you are able to get the dvd working, it won't install the recovery partition. You will have to do that separately with the script file I linked to before - whereas a bootable usb made with the createinstallmedia command will install that automatically.

Unfortunately createinstallmedia won't make a proper bootable dvd installer for mavericks. I've tried that too. It will boot but not install.

So at the moment you have to make the iso file and then burn it to dvd with disk utility.

Also, what version did you do it with? 10.9 build 13A603 golden master? That's the only one I made my dvd for.

I haven't tested on the 10.9.1 full installer. So I'm not sure if it works for that.

Can you tell me if it is better to have the recovery partition or not? My MacBookPro is not booting up and I would like to try to make the reinstall system DVD/UBS drive but I don't want too loose all my software - I don't have any backups!

It wouldn't matter which way you do it, the OS will be installed over the current one.

Assuming nothing goes wrong, all of your personal data, settings and third party software will remain as they are. But computers and software aren't perfect. There's always a chance something will go wrong and you will lose data.

So, if you have to, go out and purchase an external drive. They're aren't that expensive, and are a heck of a lot less than the value of lost data.

Thanks for response that clears up that a bit, though I stopped at 10.4.11, never did 5 6 7 or 10.8. The MBP I bought is 2009 with Mavs already installed, and I have never purchased anything from the Apple App Store.

I am really confused about how the new 'downloading' of system software really works. For example I found the following excerpt in a MacWorld report about making reinstall drives of Maverick: - " ... There’s a catch here, however: What if you’ve never purchased OS X from the Mac App Store? For example, what if you own Mavericks only because you bought a Mac that shipped with it preinstalled? Recent Macs are designed to let you reinstall the OS using Internet Recovery. So if you buy a new Mac post-Mavericks, and you haven’t purchased Mavericks for another Mac, you can’t download the Mavericks installer from the Mac App Store. For Lion, I explained how to ..."

If I ask a friend with 10.9 to download the system installer or make an install USB from their own mac will I still be able to use that to try and fix my laptop? It's getting too complicated.

This is the MacWorld article I read- http://www.macworld.com/article/2056561/how-to-make-a-bootable-mavericks-install -drive.html

Ok, the first thing is that you can not install the copy of Mavericks that is in your Recovery partition. It is licensed to someone else. If you don't have a Recovery partition you're in exactly the same position. You will have to re-install the original version of OSX that the Mac had when new. That's probably Snow Leopard, 10.6. You must order it from Apple, it comes on disk only and it's $20 in the US. Here is a link to the order page.

Once that's installed you can update it to 10.6.8 (using software update), that will give you access to the App store from where you can purchase (a free purchase) Mavericks.

To add to Csound1's post. If you do have to go back to Snow Leopard (or any other earlier OS), then you have no choice but to erase the drive before you can move on to your own App Store obtained copy of Mavericks. Meaning, you also have no choice but to first backup your data before you do anything else.

+1