Copying OS X install ISO to portable drive #

Disk Utility's Restore function fails with errors like:

Restore Failure - Could not find any scan information. The source image needs to be imagescanned before it can be restored.
Unable to scan "foobar." (Invalid argument)
Unable to scan "foobar." (Resource busy)

but asr works like a charm:

$ sudo asr -noverify -source SnowLeopard.iso -target /Volumes/target

The same command can be used to create bootable copies of the startup disk à la SuperDuper! and Carbon Copy Cloner (may need to follow with bless -folder /Volumes/target/System/Library/CoreServices, though the man page states "By default, asr will restore in place, and will not bless any folders. If --erase is specified, any blessed folders on the source will also be blessed on the target. bless -info /Volumes/<vol> will display current blessed folders for the given volume.").

In Lion and later, the -erase option seems to be required, i.e.,

$ sudo asr -noverify -source SnowLeopard.iso -target /Volumes/target -erase

/mac | Dec 07, 2012

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