Zalman ZE-300 w/ Mac OS X Images

Mainstay

Mainstay

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I saw this in an answer to someone else's thread (perhaps answered by @markverhyden ?) but I cannot find that thread and I would really like to recreate the setup... so here goes:

New to the Zalman ZE-300 units. I have the ISO's loading just fine (kicking myself that I didn't know about this approach).

I have repartitioned a 500 GB drive w/ 250 for ISO's and data recovery and have partitioned another 6 partitions as Mac OS Extended. The idea is to have images of all current OS's + helpful utilities ready to drop into any situation.

I have used Disk Utility to restore a fresh ML installESD.dmg to one of the Mac partitions...

But I am unable to get a bootable Mac drive... (iso's continue to work fine).

What critical step am I missing?
 
I don't have a Zalman.

But some observations. Disk Utility is not the best way to use an image to create a bootable drive in my experience. My preference is to use the recovery partition or regular bootable media like a DVD or thumbdrive with the image. But, in theory, the DMG should behave the same as an ISO image on an Apple machine. The machine you tested this with, what is the version OS X it last used. Also, did you use Disk Utility to create a GPT partition prior to imaging?

Based on what I have read about the Zalman it sounds like you select what image you want to present to the computer when it boots. So my guess is that you load the Mac partition with bootable ISO's of the various distro's. Select which image you want to restore. Then boot up the Mac, with the Zalman plugged in, holding down the option key. This will present the available bootable images and you should see the OS X installer previously selected.
 
Thank you @markverhyden - I wasn't sure if it was you or not... and I recall the answer being somewhere in the middle of a thread...

I believe if partitioned correctly, the various GUID partitions will be available on boot (on a Mac), and you can simply select which OS you need to boot from for a re-install (holding down the option key).

As the Zalman doesn't access those GUID partitions (only looks for ISO's in _iso), I don't think I can mount DMG files (though, that would be nice).

The Zalman is a beautiful unit, but I have encountered some quirks in getting it to work.

My first PC test system (only 3 years old) did not like it one bit. My 10 year old diagnostic system ran like a champ with it. So I will take your suggestion of trying different Macs and see if I hit some sort of compatibility issue.

Thank you for taking the time to respond. Greatly appreciated.

--m
 
I've never tried making bootable partitions on a drive in my ZE-300, so I dont know what is or isn't possible there, but is there a reason you can't use ISO files for the OSX installers? Seems like it would be a lot less hassle, and it works fine for me.
 
thank you @Slaters Kustum Machines , this was the thread I was looking for (for some reason I couldn't find it again.... ) and thank you @Krynn72 , it was your comment that got me really interested in this approach... I have yet to figure it out... but that link you provided is where I am heading next.

Cheers!
 
I am looking at having bootable OS X installation images.

I currently have them on separate drives which is a bit cumbersome.

If the VE300 can mount those "DVD's" all from the _ISO folder, then I would be very happy!
 
For bootable installation images you just need to convert the DMG's into ISO's. It can be done with all versions. Depending on which one you get, for some odd reason, the DMG is not always bootable by default. So there is some extra work to get that taken care of. Also, based on what I have read, others have been able to boot the OS X install ISO's in the _iso folder.

On a separate but related note I decided to break down and buy a VE300 and SSD so I'll be working on this also.
 
OK - I call mercy on this project.

I cannot seem to get a bootable Mac image ISO to run from the _ISO folder.

I believe it is because I am running the Zalman as firmware NTFS but if I run as exFAT I had issues getting my other ISO's to run.

I would dearly love to know how you awesome people get a MacOSX installer to run from an ISO from a Zalman VE-300.

I don't have enough hair left to spend it fruitlessly on figuring this out.

Cheers!

--m
 
Last edited:
Mainstay said:
I cannot seem to get a bootable Mac image ISO to run from the _ISO folder.

I believe it is because I am running the Zalman as firmware NTFS but if I run as exFAT I had issues getting my other ISO's to run.
Click to expand...

Sorry to hear it's being finicky on you. Just to clarify a thing.. It shouldn't matter how you format the drive when it comes to ISO's. Once an ISO is mounted it is emulated as a CD pure and simple. To the computer it is just an external USB CD-ROM drive with a CD in it. The computer at this point is unaware of the hard drive's FS.

Getting the Zalman to boot on all systems can be a challenge (and may simply not work for particular systems). There has been plenty of discussion on certain brands and BIOS's here on the forums that simply do not like to load from external CDROM drives. Some older Dell dimensions had a real hard time. On some Toshiba laptops you MUST remove the internal CDROM before it will recognize and load from the Zalman (BIOS shortcomings). Perhaps this could be your issue.
 
Yup, they do. the drive is just like any optical drive. you just need the iso to be bootable, whjch is where I have had no end of trouble.
 
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