Alexander Ross

⏱ around 1 minutes read time

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Create ISO image from directory

I was using VirtualBox to run an older version of OS X. I had some files that I needed from my host computer but hadn't set up any shared directories. I was using hdiutil to create an ISO for the OS X and figured that I could move files from my host computer using another ISO because it can be mounted without any restarts.

No additional tools is needed since hdiutil comes with OS X/macOS.

This is basically it:

hdiutil makehybrid -o ~/Desktop/image.iso /directory/to/make/iso/of -iso -joliet

You could use the command above as is and just change /directory/to/make/iso/of to the path you would like an iso of. But if you are interested in a breakdown of the command it comes here.

  • hdiutil a tool that comes with macOS to manipulate disk images
  • makehybrid -o [image] [source] the hdiutil verb to generate a read-only disk image with given image and source path
  • -iso create the disk image as an ISO which is an cross-platform format
  • -joliet the filesystem for the disk image. OS X/macOS will prefer the Joliet filesystem according to the man pages of hdiutil.
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