How to Downsize OS X Installation Discs

You may want to downsize your OSX installation disks to back them up. It may seem redundant now, but when you need to reinstall and you misplaced the disks or find the originals broken, you'll be glad.

Difficulty: Moderate

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Six gigabytes of free hard drive space
• Original OS X install disc 1

1. Create a new disk image with Apple's Disk Utility. You will find the application in your Applications folder, inside Utilities. Look under the File Menu for the "Disk Image from Folder" command. Select the Installation DVD in the file browser as your source.

2. Drag the folder "Xcode Tools" to the trash. You can find it by double clicking on the new disk image icon, and sorting your files by "File Size" in the "List" view.

3. Delete extra installation packages. Open the folder "Packages" in the "Installation" folder inside the "System" folder. Drag any language files you don't intend to use to the trash, as well as files for Printer Drivers you won't be using. If you don't intend to use Open Source software applications you can also trash the file "X11user.pkg."

4. Empty the trash. You can verify the smaller disk size by selecting the disk and choosing "Get Info" from the File Menu. Make sure the "Used" size is under 4.37 gigabytes. If not continue to delete files.

5. Make a disk image from the smaller version exactly the way you created the first disk image. Don't change the name, but save the new image to a different folder so you don't confuse the two.

6. Burn the second disk image to a DVD. Click the "Burn" icon in the Disk Utility taskbar and choose the disk image in the file browser window.

Tips & Warnings

• Buy a good backup utility or shareware disc cloner. Then you backup your entire system to another drive and keep your system settings intact, rather than doing a clean reinstall.
• Disk Utility will take a while to create and burn disc images.
• You can look at individual file sizes on your disk copy before you delete. Make sure the disk window is in "List" view and type "Command(Apple)+J." A view options dialogue will open. Check "Calculate All Sizes." The window will refresh with sizes for every file on the disk showing in the "Size" column.
• If you lose track of which disk image you are working with, check the file creation date and time. The one with the later creation time is the one you want to burn.
• Keep track of the files you deleted. When you install from your burned backup disk, you must perform a custom install and deselect those options.