With advances in technology, faster access to data (SSD) and thinning of hardware, legacy technologies are often the first to get these cuts made thinner and lighter devices, while they are making them more powerful and efficient.
Installing OS X has really never been a particularly difficult task, but try to do it on a MacBook Air or a system with an optical drive unusable. It is not so easy, even the operating system download the Mac App Store is not done when the hard drive needs replacement or recovery partition. Fortunately, Macs have a couple of options, specifically a USB Boot, and like most has a slot for SD cards, can do through this port.
Creating a USB installer for Apple OS X 10.7 to 10.8
Before we continue, we will need the following items to complete the process:
8GB USB Flash Drive (or SD card)
Install OS X Mountain Lion.app (installer downloaded from Mac App Store)
Apple computer with Mac App Store (OS X 10.6.8 +)
User accounts with administrative privileges
1st Stage
Follow these steps:
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Using a Mac with at least OS X 10.6.8 installed, access the Mac App Store and download Lion (10.7) or Mountain Lion (10.8) installation of the application.
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Insert the USB drive into your Mac and run Disk Utility.
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Click the USB drive from the menu on the left and select the Partition tab.
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Click the drop-down menu, select 1 partition.
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Select Mac OS Extended (Journaled) for the format type from the dropdown menu.
6 Click the button and select the radio button GUID Partition Table and click "OK".
7 Once the USB formatting is complete, locate Install Mac OS X Mountain Lion.app (downloaded in step 1 to the Applications folder by default). Right-click the file and select Show Package Contents.
8 Navigate the Contents file structure | Shared Support InstallESD.dmg and drag the file to the desktop.
9 Return to the Disk Utility and click the newly formatted USB drive in the menu, then click the Restore tab.
10 In the Source text box, click the button and select the image file to your desktop InstallESD.dmg. At the destination, drag and drop the partition created in the USB drive into the text box.
11 After checking that the fields are correct, click the Restore button and select Delete from the application, if asked to do so.
12 The process can indicate more than one hour, but in experience, the process takes much less time to complete.
2nd Stage.
Follow these steps:
Note: The installation DVD must be original and not an Apple Restore DVD that came with previous models of Apple laptops.
1 Insert the DVD Apple OS X installation into the optical drive.
2. Launch Disk Utility and click on the installation drive of the OS from the menu on the left.
3 Click the Restore tab and verify that the Mac OS X installation DVD box appears in the source text.
4 Drag and drop the partition of the USB drive formatted to Target text box. (If you do not format the USB drive, follow steps # 2-6 1st stage) and then continue with step 5 below.
5 After you verify that the fields are correct, click the Restore button. Select Delete in the confirmation box, if asked to do so.
6 If required authentication, type the credentials that have administrator access, and click "OK" to continue.
7 Because this scenario requires reading data from the optical drive, it can be slower than reading the files in the hard disk.
Once completed, the USB drive will be the boot drive and have the full installation of OS X on the existence of installing systems from scratch and update if necessary. Remember this is a recordable disc that offers some additional advantages over read-only media with some caveats too.
Pros:
Include additional resources on the drive that your organization requires, as Combo updaters, applications, or settings.
Directories backup before initializing the HDD and / or reinstall OS X.
Including multiple versions of OS X on the same drive.
Contra:
Recordable media data in real time may be subject to accidental deletion or corruption.
Read / write speeds vary greatly depending on the make / model of the USB drive. Choose the highest speed of reading and writing for your particular application to minimize this bottleneck.
Lost / stolen USB drives and additional data, such as settings, passwords, etc. Which may be contained therein.Be careful!
Feel free to include additional files or folders to existing units, while the hierarchy of the original file is not modified in any way. This is important because the OS X installer is looking for specific files in specific locations during installation. A file is missing, damaged or altered may result in an unreliable system.
Multiple versions of OS X on the same USB / SD card (Extra)
You'll need to have a USB / SD capable of containing all operating systems on the unit. This means about 8 GB of storage space version of OS X. The steps are the same as creating a USB installer for Apple OS X 10.7 to 10.8 tutorial mentioned above, except for two key differences:
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Instead of selecting the partition "1" in step 4 of the 2nd Stage, you will select a number equal to the number of versions of OS X to be copied over. (Eg If you will create 10.5 / 10.6 / 10.7 / 10.8,. 8 GB x 4 versions of OS X = 32 GB total, then 4 partitions to be created).
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Now will have to be repeated once for each version of OS X that the copy process (steps # 9-12 1st stage) is stored.
Ready !!