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Install OSX Installers on External NVME drive partition for multi os installer, Ventura, Monterey, Big Sur
- Thread starter ernie599
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Just my opinion, but the "better way" to do this is to use several small flash drives (16gb ought to do for each), and create INDIVIDUAL bootable USB flash drives.
Less confusion, and fewer chances for things to "go wrong" when you're not expecting them to...
Less confusion, and fewer chances for things to "go wrong" when you're not expecting them to...
Just make several partitions in Disk Utility and point the various installers to the appropriate partitions. There's no need to separate them onto individual flash drives.
In advance sorry for LONG post lol, many details so you understand what i am trying to do.
I have a 500Gig USB SSD i want to turn into a multi OS installer drive,
so i do not have to have a butt load of thumb drives to install multiple operating systems on multiple machines.
I also have a 120Gig USB SSD that i can use for the Windows and Linux installers.
so fed up with having 17 different thumb drives to install multiple OS versions.
some are Vanilla Windows, some are Rufus Windows,
some are Vanilla MacOS, some are OpenCore MacOS,
some are Linux for mac, some are Linux for PC.
Example of how i was thinking of tackling this.
MacOS, OpenCore MacOS & Rufus Windows installers for MAC:
EFI Partition= REFind or OpenCore for booting the SSD and displaying the installer partitions
Partition 1= MacOS Mojave
Partition 2= MacOS Big Sur
Partition 3= MacOS Monterey
Partition 4= MacOS Sonoma
Partition 5= MacOS Sequoia
Partition 6= Rufus Windows 10
Partition 7= Rufus Windows 11
just to name a few.
The way i was thinking of doing it was partition the drive,
Then format each partition to suit the OS installer being created on it.
The OS Install creators will label their partition to suit the OS installer on it,
making it easy to find the Installer you want when you boot from the drive.
the only ones i will have to label my self will be the OpenCore MacOS Partitions,
OpenCore installer creator tool does not give you the option the label the USB Installer Drive,
it just uses the name supplied by the MacOS installer app.
Use Install Disk Creator for MacOS to create the Vanilla MacOS installers on their partitions.
OpenCore to create the OpenCore MacOS installers on their partitions.
Rufus to create the windows installers on their partitions.
Windows Media Creator for Vanilla windows Installers on their partitions.
Unetbootin-mac for the Mac & Windows Linux distro's on their partitions.
then install REFind or OpenCore on the EFI partition for booting and displaying the Installers.
Just wondering if the OpenCore installers will work with the installer drive Booting from REFind,
or should i just use OpenCore to boot the drive and display the installers?
Will REFind and opencore boot on a PC ? years since i used a PC and have never used REFind or opencore on one.
I have a 500Gig USB SSD i want to turn into a multi OS installer drive,
so i do not have to have a butt load of thumb drives to install multiple operating systems on multiple machines.
I also have a 120Gig USB SSD that i can use for the Windows and Linux installers.
so fed up with having 17 different thumb drives to install multiple OS versions.
some are Vanilla Windows, some are Rufus Windows,
some are Vanilla MacOS, some are OpenCore MacOS,
some are Linux for mac, some are Linux for PC.
Example of how i was thinking of tackling this.
MacOS, OpenCore MacOS & Rufus Windows installers for MAC:
EFI Partition= REFind or OpenCore for booting the SSD and displaying the installer partitions
Partition 1= MacOS Mojave
Partition 2= MacOS Big Sur
Partition 3= MacOS Monterey
Partition 4= MacOS Sonoma
Partition 5= MacOS Sequoia
Partition 6= Rufus Windows 10
Partition 7= Rufus Windows 11
just to name a few.
The way i was thinking of doing it was partition the drive,
Then format each partition to suit the OS installer being created on it.
The OS Install creators will label their partition to suit the OS installer on it,
making it easy to find the Installer you want when you boot from the drive.
the only ones i will have to label my self will be the OpenCore MacOS Partitions,
OpenCore installer creator tool does not give you the option the label the USB Installer Drive,
it just uses the name supplied by the MacOS installer app.
Use Install Disk Creator for MacOS to create the Vanilla MacOS installers on their partitions.
OpenCore to create the OpenCore MacOS installers on their partitions.
Rufus to create the windows installers on their partitions.
Windows Media Creator for Vanilla windows Installers on their partitions.
Unetbootin-mac for the Mac & Windows Linux distro's on their partitions.
then install REFind or OpenCore on the EFI partition for booting and displaying the Installers.
Just wondering if the OpenCore installers will work with the installer drive Booting from REFind,
or should i just use OpenCore to boot the drive and display the installers?
Will REFind and opencore boot on a PC ? years since i used a PC and have never used REFind or opencore on one.
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when you say "installers" are you talking about installing the OS on the partition?
or creating an OS installer on the partition?
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You would create the installer for each OS on each partition. There’s no need to do a full OS installation.
I will be surprised if you’re able to get all those installers to boot from one disk.
I have been making multi-partition drives for macOS installers for at least 15 years. I have finally settled on using 22GB partitions for bootable installers. I have drives with every MacOS installer from Leopard to Sonoma. Then, I have others that begin at High Sierra, including the most current Tahoe full installers. Each installer is bootable on its own partition. Once I have them made properly, there is no problem with selecting and booting to each installer.
And, I also have a drive I call "Mac Bootmaster", with full installs of every Mac system from Leopard to Ventura (so far), each on its own partition, all on one drive. Any system partition from High Sierra up, is in one APFS shared container. The newer Macs get a little complicated to actually boot from, but, so far, I only need the Option Bootpicker screen to choose which system partition that I boot. All those system choices help when troubleshooting a Mac that is struggling to boot to its own boot drive.
I do have to remember that older systems (pre-APFS) will not even see any APFS partitions, but all work to boot whatever systems are supported on each Mac -- all on the same device. I have a small number of utilities on each bootable system, for testing batteries, as an example, and have old versions of DiskWarrior on some systems, etc.
Each system boots to a similar network setup, so should easily connect to my network.
And, I also have a drive I call "Mac Bootmaster", with full installs of every Mac system from Leopard to Ventura (so far), each on its own partition, all on one drive. Any system partition from High Sierra up, is in one APFS shared container. The newer Macs get a little complicated to actually boot from, but, so far, I only need the Option Bootpicker screen to choose which system partition that I boot. All those system choices help when troubleshooting a Mac that is struggling to boot to its own boot drive.
I do have to remember that older systems (pre-APFS) will not even see any APFS partitions, but all work to boot whatever systems are supported on each Mac -- all on the same device. I have a small number of utilities on each bootable system, for testing batteries, as an example, and have old versions of DiskWarrior on some systems, etc.
Each system boots to a similar network setup, so should easily connect to my network.
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I should’ve been clearer. There won’t be any issue having all those actual macOS installers, but trying to combine Windows and OCLP installers on the same disk as the Mac installers would likely present challenges.
Yeah i made it sound REALLY complicated lol just over thought it,
never made a multi OS installer before.
No need for Refind or Opencore boot managers on the installer drive.
I can live with the Rufus windows installers being on thumb drives that's only 3 USB thumbs to carry around,
it was all the MacOS thumbs lol, SO MANY 😱👎.
In the middle of creating the drive now, once i have all the Vanilla MacOS installers on it i will reboot
and see if options Key boot & opencore boot manager pick them all up.
Using MacDaddy's Install Disk Creator to add them all to the External drives partitions.
I am using a Genuine Mac 240 Gig Internal SSD drive in a USB 3 dock connected to a USB 3 expansion card
on a cMP 5,1 running Vanilla Monterey.
Figured the Mac internal SSD was the best choose because of read write speeds of the drive,
Cant boot from the USB expansion card but it makes creating the drive so much quicker from the desktop.
OK, just finished the Vanilla MacOS installers just going to Reboot and see if option key boot
and OCLP manager pick them all up. BRB
EDIT:
Was unable to test with option key on boot as my Video Card is NOT EFI,
its a PC card so no boot screen from options key 🥺.
all of the following Vanilla installers showed up and booted from OCLP Boot Manager.
El Capitan - High Sierra - Big Sur - Monterey 😎.
The following Vanilla installers showed up and launched then got stuck at the apple screen,
most likely due to the fact that they do not natively support cMP 5,1,
Ventura- -Sonoma - sequoia 🤨.
Will try again later and give then more than 10 minutes each to boot into installer.
EDIT:
The OCLP MacOS builds DO in fact require a USB of their own as they populate the entire drive,
when i created a Ventura OCLP build it took over the entire 240gig of the drive
and removed all other partitions 🤬😡.
Just about to see if the Rufus windows 11 will work along side the vanilla MacOS installers,
I'll just do a quick test with vanilla Monterey and Rufus Win 11,
see if they will play together, or if i have to separate them.
Edit:
OK Rufus Windows is the same deal as the OCLP MacOS installers, they take up the entire drive,
I would assume that windows media creator will do the same thing,
so separate USB Thumbs for them as well as the OCLP MacOS installers.
Another thing to remember about OCLP MacOS installers is that they are specific to the Mac Model they where created for,
and you may have LOTS of issues after install due to hardware incompatibilities
if you use then on other Mac's.
Sorry for BIG post, hopefully some one will find it useful if not informative.
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SORRY. Yet another BIG post but you need to read it all.
Choosing your drive:
Look for a drive with high read/write speeds, this will make creating the installers on the drive much faster.
A drive that is around 120gig is ideal for this task so you wont be wasting drive space
due to the partition table limits.
There is a limit to how many partitions you can make on a drive.
From my testing i found it to be around 16 partitions, so choose you drive wisely,
and only create installers for the MacOS installer app you REALLY wont on the drive.
The partitions need to be around 20gig each and no smaller than 19 gig
for when you get to the latest releases of MacOS,
Tahoe's installer app is just under 18 gig on its own, so it needs lots of space.
if you have a USB expansion card use that for the higher write speeds when creating the installers on the drive,
you can NOT boot from the expansion card, you will have to use the factory USB ports on you mac to boot from the installer drive, we are just using the expansion card to make the creation process faster.
Use MacDaddy's install disk creator to create the installers on the drive.
STEP ONE:
plug your drive into a USB port, wait for the drive to initialize, around 10 to 15 seconds for most drives.
STEP TWO:
Opening disk utility.
Click on a blank section of the desktop then go to the top left corner of the desktop and select "GO"
scroll down and click "utilities", this will open the utilities folder then select "Disk Utility".
STEP THREE:
Prepare the drive.
select the drive its self Not the partition that's on it from the left column,
Look in the menu at the top of the disk utility screen for "Erase"
then select "MacOS Extended (Journaled)" as the format, with "GUID partition map" Scheme
then click "Erase".
STEP FOUR:
Creating the partitions.
again select the drive its self Not the partition that's on it from the left column.
again look in the menu at the top of the disk utility screen for "Partition",
this will open the partitioning tool,
look for the "+" symbol in the left panel under the circle and click it to create a new partition.
keep clicking the "+" symbol till you have up to 16 partitions that are around 20 gig each,
but no smaller than 19 Gig Each then click "Apply" in the lower right hand corner of the partitioning window,
now watch as disk utility creates you new partitions on the drive.
There is no need to format the new partitions MacDaddy's install disk creator will do that for you as you create the installers, you can name them if you want.
Close disk utility and open MacDaddy's install disk creator.
it is quite easy to use,
There are three selection areas,
The top one is to select your drive/partition,
(start with the top partition and work your way down for each installer app)
the next selection area below it is for choosing the MacOS installer app,
these need to be in you applications folder for the best results.
At the bottom is "CREATE Installer" (the name says it all),
type in you admin password when asked and tap enter,
when it has finished creating the installer it will give you a pop up message stating it has completed its task,
click OK and repeat for each installer on its own partition.
easy peasy lemon sqeezy.
Choosing your drive:
Look for a drive with high read/write speeds, this will make creating the installers on the drive much faster.
A drive that is around 120gig is ideal for this task so you wont be wasting drive space
due to the partition table limits.
There is a limit to how many partitions you can make on a drive.
From my testing i found it to be around 16 partitions, so choose you drive wisely,
and only create installers for the MacOS installer app you REALLY wont on the drive.
The partitions need to be around 20gig each and no smaller than 19 gig
for when you get to the latest releases of MacOS,
Tahoe's installer app is just under 18 gig on its own, so it needs lots of space.
if you have a USB expansion card use that for the higher write speeds when creating the installers on the drive,
you can NOT boot from the expansion card, you will have to use the factory USB ports on you mac to boot from the installer drive, we are just using the expansion card to make the creation process faster.
Use MacDaddy's install disk creator to create the installers on the drive.
STEP ONE:
plug your drive into a USB port, wait for the drive to initialize, around 10 to 15 seconds for most drives.
STEP TWO:
Opening disk utility.
Click on a blank section of the desktop then go to the top left corner of the desktop and select "GO"
scroll down and click "utilities", this will open the utilities folder then select "Disk Utility".
STEP THREE:
Prepare the drive.
select the drive its self Not the partition that's on it from the left column,
Look in the menu at the top of the disk utility screen for "Erase"
then select "MacOS Extended (Journaled)" as the format, with "GUID partition map" Scheme
then click "Erase".
STEP FOUR:
Creating the partitions.
again select the drive its self Not the partition that's on it from the left column.
again look in the menu at the top of the disk utility screen for "Partition",
this will open the partitioning tool,
look for the "+" symbol in the left panel under the circle and click it to create a new partition.
keep clicking the "+" symbol till you have up to 16 partitions that are around 20 gig each,
but no smaller than 19 Gig Each then click "Apply" in the lower right hand corner of the partitioning window,
now watch as disk utility creates you new partitions on the drive.
There is no need to format the new partitions MacDaddy's install disk creator will do that for you as you create the installers, you can name them if you want.
Close disk utility and open MacDaddy's install disk creator.
it is quite easy to use,
There are three selection areas,
The top one is to select your drive/partition,
(start with the top partition and work your way down for each installer app)
the next selection area below it is for choosing the MacOS installer app,
these need to be in you applications folder for the best results.
At the bottom is "CREATE Installer" (the name says it all),
type in you admin password when asked and tap enter,
when it has finished creating the installer it will give you a pop up message stating it has completed its task,
click OK and repeat for each installer on its own partition.
easy peasy lemon sqeezy.
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After much testing, You can only put vanilla (no mods) MacOS installers on the same drive,
each in its own partition as you stated.
OCLP MacOS and windows (Rufus or vanilla) require their own drive,
one for each installer, they do not like sharing a drive even with multiple partitions.
I have a different experience (with different results)
I don't do much with multi- installs for Windows, but I have a dozen or more, multi-partition macOS installers, with no problems booting to one macOS installer, while having up to 15 more bootable partition, each with a different macOS bootable installer. I don't modify those installers, other than copying them in place to each partition.
OCLP installs are a different issue. All that needs is replacing the EFI partition for whatever Mac I will be installing the macOS OCLP install. I have installer drives that are dedicated for that, which means that only those macOS versions that are supported with OCLP are available on the drive, which makes it pointless to have anything older than Big Sur installer on that drive. All I need to update the EFI partition is a couple of minutes to plug the drive into any Mac, run Open-Core patcher app, and change the settings to the Mac model I will be installing OCLP macOS, then run Build & Install OpenCore. If you have changed the settings to show your target Mac model, the EFI on the device will be updated, ready to use to boot your target Mac.
In my experience, using installers with OCLP is not affected by other bootable partitions on the same device.
I don't do much with multi- installs for Windows, but I have a dozen or more, multi-partition macOS installers, with no problems booting to one macOS installer, while having up to 15 more bootable partition, each with a different macOS bootable installer. I don't modify those installers, other than copying them in place to each partition.
OCLP installs are a different issue. All that needs is replacing the EFI partition for whatever Mac I will be installing the macOS OCLP install. I have installer drives that are dedicated for that, which means that only those macOS versions that are supported with OCLP are available on the drive, which makes it pointless to have anything older than Big Sur installer on that drive. All I need to update the EFI partition is a couple of minutes to plug the drive into any Mac, run Open-Core patcher app, and change the settings to the Mac model I will be installing OCLP macOS, then run Build & Install OpenCore. If you have changed the settings to show your target Mac model, the EFI on the device will be updated, ready to use to boot your target Mac.
In my experience, using installers with OCLP is not affected by other bootable partitions on the same device.