Imac not recognising bootable USB

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Hi, sorry if this question is in the wrong place, I'm having terrific trouble trying to install Snow Leopard.
I have a blank 16gb USB, I went to Disk Utility, erased, created a GUID partition and then moved onto Restore, I selected the new USB as the Destination and the (mounted) Mac OS X Install.dmg as the Source. I clicked 'restore' and it began 'copying blocks'. This appeared to be successful after about 25 mins.

My problem occurs at this point, if I go to Startup Disk the new USB Mac OS X install shows up, if i click it and press restart it simply boots back up in Tiger. If I shut down and restart holding Alt no other option appears than the original Macintosh HD (again booting it up in Tiger). It's as if it cannot see there is a USB there at all, but as I say it does recognise it in Startup Disk.

Is there any reason that the iMac wouldn't recognise the USB? The iMac info is:
Hardware Overview:

Model Name: iMac
Model Identifier: iMac5,1
Processor Name: Intel Core 2 Duo
Processor Speed: 2.16 GHz
Number Of Processors: 1
Total Number Of Cores: 2
L2 Cache (per processor): 4 MB
Memory: 1 GB
Bus Speed: 667 MHz
Boot ROM Version: IM51.0090.B09
SMC Version: 1.9f4

(not sure if this helps?). I did speak to an Apple tech support man who said there should be no problems with booting from this method (before I attempted it!).

I have been trying now for 3 days and get the same result each time!

Can anybody help?

Thank you in advance.
 

chscag

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Your Mac's Specs
2017 27" iMac, 10.5" iPad Pro, iPhone 8, iPhone 11, iPhone 12 Mini, Numerous iPods, Monterey
Not sure I understand why you're trying to install Snow Leopard in this manner?

And, where did the Snow Leopard image come from? A Snow Leopard install DVD is only $29.99 purchased direct from Apple. What's the purpose of booting from a USB flash drive unless your optical drive is not working?
 
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Thanks for replying so quickly, chscag. The story is slightly convoluted, I bought the mac last week from a Chinese chap who is moving back to China, the mac is his girlfriends (who has already moved back), the Snow Leopard .dmg file had been put onto the mac after a clean install of Tiger in case the new owner wanted to upgrade and she took the boxed copy of Snow Leopard with her. I am brand new to mac's, is this the wrong thing to do?
 
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Silver M1 iMac 512/16/8/8 macOS 11.6
You need your own system install disc to install an operating system. And what are the details of your iMac?
 

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