Create a bootable CentOS USB drive with a Mac (OS X) for a PC

Visit Centos’ web page, https://www.centos.org/download/, and download the iso image you’d like to boot from.

When the download has completed, open up terminal and use ‘hditutil’ to convert the *.iso to an *.img file (specifically, a UDIF read/write image).

$hdiutil convert -format UDRW -o target.img CentOS-7.0-1406-x86_64-Everything.iso
 Reading Master Boot Record (MBR : 0)…
 Reading CentOS 7 x86_64 (Apple_ISO : 1)…
 Reading (Type EF : 2)…
 Reading CentOS 7 x86_64 (Apple_ISO : 3)…
 …………………………………………………………………….
 Elapsed Time: 33.590s
 Speed: 200.5Mbytes/sec
 Savings: 0.0%
 created: /tmp/target.img.dmg

Use the ‘dd’ utility to copy the iso to your USB drive:

$ diskutil list
     /dev/disk0
     #: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
     0: GUID_partition_scheme *121.3 GB disk0
     1: EFI EFI 209.7 MB disk0s1
     2: Apple_HFS Macintosh HD 120.5 GB disk0s2
     3: Apple_Boot Recovery HD 650.0 MB disk0s3
     /dev/disk1
     #: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
     0: FDisk_partition_scheme *31.9 GB disk1
     1: DOS_FAT_32 NO NAME 31.9 GB disk1s1
     /dev/disk2
     #: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
     0: CentOS_7.0_Final *4.5 GB disk2
$ diskutil unmountDisk /dev/disk1**
     Unmount of all volumes on disk1 was successful
$ diskutil unmountDisk /dev/disk2**
     Unmount of all volumes on disk2 was successful
$ time sudo dd if=target.img.dmg of=/dev/disk1 bs=1m**
     Password:
     4261+0 records in
     4261+0 records out
     4467982336 bytes transferred in 1215.483272 secs (3675890 bytes/sec)

You should be done! Boot from the USB drive on your target machine.

May 23, 2014