Bootable USB drive with ability to install Windows/Mac OSx/Linux [closed]

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Closed 3 years ago.

Is there a way to make a bootable USB drive with the ability to install Mac OSx, Windows 7 and a flavor of Linus from it?

i understand bootable Mac OSx would only work on apple hardware, I also know that it is possible to make a bootable windows/linux usb drive, but could not find a way to also add Mac OSx

Answer 1

Sounds like you want a Hybrid MBR. May not work though, there's a lot of issues with them.

Overall, hybrid MBRs should be avoided. I've included support for them in GPT fdisk only because certain popular OSes (read: Microsoft Windows, at least through Windows 7) can't boot from GPT disks on BIOS-based computers. (See the Booting from GPT page for a possible workaround, though.) This fact makes hybrid MBRs a practical necessity in some environments. Apple's Boot Camp, for instance, uses hybrid MBRs to enable Macintoshes to dual-boot both Mac OS X and Windows; and if you want to dual-boot Windows and anything else on a disk of more than 2 TiB on a BIOS-based system, you'll need a hybrid MBR, UEFI DUET, or possibly some other solution I don't yet know about. Older non-Windows OSes (BeOS, OS/2, DOS, etc.) are likely to require a hybrid MBR to handle GPT disks, too, although I haven't tested them explicitly.

Answer 2

The OS X is an operating system very jealous and hardly does boot on any computer that is not a Mac. There are unofficial distributions calls Hackintosh.

If you want to create the USB will use a Mac computer first have to install a bootloader, rEFInd is an excellent bootloader that supports Mac OS X (El Capitan), Windows and Linux. You can install rEFInd on the hard drive of your Mac or USB drive.

Windows starts in your USB drive installed in the version you prefer (7, 8 or 10) using the Boot Camp Assistant creates a USB drive to install Windows. Connect to your Mac the two USB drive, one of which is where Windows will install and the other is WININSTALL you created with the Boot Camp. Make the USB drive boot WININSTALL recognize the USB drive to where you want to install Windows. You must create a partition on the USB drive of 1/3 of the total space.

After you install Mac OS X, the Disk Utility creates a new partition on the USB drive 1/3 should be in the file system Mac OS Extended (Journaled), that's where you will install the Mac OS X.

Finally, install the Linux distribution you want. Linux distributions that have been running well in Mac are Ubuntu, Fedora, Kali. When installing Linux fails to install the bootloader (GRUB) and that Mac is better rEFInd.

It is possible that after installing Linux do not boot Windows and Mac OS X, may be because the MBR when installing Linux was affected. For Windows and Mac OS X run correctly is necessary that the drive where they are installed using protective MBR.

End of Mac OS X can use diskutil list to view the list of connected drives. The USB drive can identify that as disk1. When you identify your USB drive uses sudo gpt show /dev/disk1 to identify the MBR is protective MBR appears something like:

start size index contents 0 1 PMBR

In PMBR contents should appear, otherwise if in contents says MBR Windows and Mac OS X will not boot. With gdisk tool you can solve this problem. Use the sudo gdisk /dev/disk1 command, then press x, then n to create a new protective MBR, and to write the changes press w.