[Guide] Unibeast without USB installer (All OS Versions)

[mitchellk]

There is a lot of problems with later releases of OSX especially with changes to their USB specifications. This results in many people having various installation problems that actually relate back to lost USB devices during install.

Your best bet to install any version of OSX nice and cleanly without any USB stick problems is not to use one at all. I have tried this approach over the past week to install Yosemite, El-Capitan, Mavericks and Sierra and it works for all of them.

It also creates a permanent bootable partition on your SSD/HDD instead of a USB stick.

This guide is for SSD but the same would apply for any HDD

1. Buy yourself a USB 3 > SSD or USB 3 > HDD enclosure (they are dirt cheap)

2. Plug your SDD / HDD into your enclosure

3. Plug the enclosure into a USB 3 port on any existing working Mac / Macbook

4. Open Disk Utility

5. Click on your mounted drive and click ERASE (make sure you click on the correct drive)
Use default settings of (Mac OS Extended Journalled)

6. Now click the partition button and call the partition CLOVER and set it's size to 16GB

7. Now click the remaining partition "Unnamed" and rename it to OSX

8. Now make sure Sierra Installer is in your Applications folder and appropriate Unibeast version on your desktop.

9. Open Unibeast click continue, continue, continue, continue and you will see it detect a partition called CLOVER where it can install to.

10. Let Unibeast finish. With an SSD this process takes < 2 minutes

11. When complete eject the drive and all it's partitions.

12. Take it out of the enclosure and Plug your SSD / HDD into your new hardware and set it's UEFI partition as the first boot device in your bios

13. Boot and you will see CLOVER boot loader

14. Once you get to the installer, you select the partition called OSX to install to

15. Once complete and it restarts you will see a new Partition to boot from in Clover called OSX

16. Boot from OSX and finish your installation of OSX

17. Once you are at the desktop FIRST check what is working and not working (audio, ethernet etc etc) BEFORE you even run Multibeast.

18. If you need to run Multibeast for any reason you can do so but there is NO need to install Clover Bootloader to your OSX partition at all, a clover UEFI partition is already on your SSD / HDD so no need to install another one. Just load whatever kexts you need and do not install Clover UEFI as part of your Multibeast post install.

19. The CLOVER partition will always be there and at any time if you mess things up with kexts and mods you can simply boot from the CLOVER partition, get to the installer, use Disk Utility to wipe your OSX partition and then reinstall. It works like a charm and it saves huge amounts of time.

20. To make any changes to clover you then use the super awesome Clover Configurator.app and there is no more need for messing with config.plist files manually.

I have now done about 50 installations over the past week all onto the same hardware. I've toyed with Mavericks, Yosemite, El-Capitan and now finally Sierra. I also have not had to even use Multibeast even once after any of my installations as I used Toleda's Realtek script to get audio working and Nvidia Drivers to get video working. Everything else like LAN and USB were all detected and working stock using Apple Drivers so I had no need to use Multibeast post install at all.

This method really is a big time saver and if you are using an SSD it take about 13 minutes to do a fresh installation when you mess up.

Also if you loaded a kext and you messed things up and got a Kernel Panic afterwards. You simply plug your SSD / HDD back into the enclosure, plug into another mac, search for and delete the kext, put the drive back in your machine and voila it boots again.

Hope this helps many of you out there, it sure saves me huge amounts of time whilst getting a system perfectly tuned.

Apologies to TonyMac and MacMan if this goes against using Multibeast. Still the greatest post install tool and very necessary for many people no intention to drive people away from using it.

 

[herrschultzz]

Amazingly simple process especially for people like myself who have built countless PC's and Hacks over the decades. I'll post my results after I try your method today.

 

[Going Bald]

If you have the Mac and the external drive enclosure, UniBeast is not required at all. You can directly install OS X to your external HDD/SSD using the Mac. All you then have to do is install Clover to the external drive and move it to its new home, but be very carefull when instaling Clover - you really do not want to install it on your Mac.

 

[herrschultzz]

Ok, I tried it and you are more than correct about the ultimate speed of doing this and changing something if it goes south on you.

However, for an El Capitan install try, this is what I got;

without Clover injection into the Clover EFI partition - Clover install not noted on your list here.


Thinking it might just need that Clover injection into the Clover EFI partition, I got to here;


No love here, just the same dead screen, no install routine at all.

Trying to do a Sierra install next.

My build will be;
GA-Z170X-UD5 TH
32 GB Ram
i7 6700K CPU

 

[herrschultzz]

Sierra install failed completely also, got to this screen pretty quickly;



As much as I love the routine you've outlined, unless I've got something very wrong in the BIOS - which I've checked thoroughly, then your system is not working to install either El Capitan or Sierra.

I was wondering why you don't list a Clover install after the Unibeast make disk is done?
Any other suggestions as to what I might be doing wrong would be welcomed - going into my 20th install now. . .

 

[herrschultzz]

If you have the Mac and the external drive enclosure, UniBeast is not required at all. You can directly install OS X to your external HDD/SSD using the Mac. All you then have to do is install Clover to the external drive and move it to its new home, but be very carefull when instaling Clover - you really do not want to install it on your Mac.

OK trying this idea out now.

 

[herrschultzz]

Well, that killed my MBPro

I got El Capitan installed to the SSD / OS X partition, but on reboot of the MBPro I now get a continuous start chime with black screen. Tried to reset PRAM and SMC without luck. Guess my hackintosh slog is over until I can get the MBPro back from Apple service.

Jeeshh, bad bad luck all this week and this is the capper

 

[herrschultzz]

Sorry Mitchelk, looks like I'm starting to hijack your thread here, but I guess if people have some problems and issues with your suggestion (which appears to have worked wonderfully for you), then it's probably ok to do a little analysis.

After my main MBPro died from making an El Capitan install on my partitioned SSD, I went to my oldest MBP and installed Clover into the SSD Clover partition. I put the SSD into my build machine and got a full progress bar under the Apple logo, but nothing more - just stopped dead there. Funny thing is, I was able to set up El Capitan on the SSD before I rebooted the MBPro to get to the Clover Install on the MBPro desktop.

Now my verbose comments end with;
"IGPU Graphics Driver failed to load - could not register with frame buffer driver"
&
"unknown locale: 21"

I guess that maybe these could be boot flagged off, but I wouldn't know which boot flags to use.

Giving up for the weekend, why ruin a perfectly good Saturday of college football games??

 

[mitchellk]

Sorry Mitchelk, looks like I'm starting to hijack your thread here, but I guess if people have some problems and issues with your suggestion (which appears to have worked wonderfully for you), then it's probably ok to do a little analysis.

After my main MBPro died from making an El Capitan install on my partitioned SSD, I went to my oldest MBP and installed Clover into the SSD Clover partition. I put the SSD into my build machine and got a full progress bar under the Apple logo, but nothing more - just stopped dead there. Funny thing is, I was able to set up El Capitan on the SSD before I rebooted the MBPro to get to the Clover Install on the MBPro desktop.

Now my verbose comments end with;
"IGPU Graphics Driver failed to load - could not register with frame buffer driver"
&
"unknown locale: 21"

I guess that maybe these could be boot flagged off, but I wouldn't know which boot flags to use.

Giving up for the weekend, why ruin a perfectly good Saturday of college football games??

Saturday .... what's that ?

try many disable flags until you can get to installer and desktop, most importantly always use

-v

even when my system is configured I still run it permanently with a -v flag so I can see any errors or problems on startup.

are you using these methods to install on a real MBPro ????

 

[mitchellk]

If you have the Mac and the external drive enclosure, UniBeast is not required at all. You can directly install OS X to your external HDD/SSD using the Mac. All you then have to do is install Clover to the external drive and move it to its new home, but be very carefull when instaling Clover - you really do not want to install it on your Mac.

Thanks for that ... yet another great solution.