#INSTALL MAC OS X LION FROM USB HOW TO#
#INSTALL MAC OS X LION FROM USB INSTALL#
#INSTALL MAC OS X LION FROM USB DOWNLOAD#

#INSTALL MAC OS X LION FROM USB INSTALL#

After previous step finished choose the Restore tab and in the Source box drag the Lion install image from the left hand window.

Give each partition a name and choose Mac OS Extended (Journaled).

If you want two partitions, then below the Partition Layout drop down is a visual representation of your layout – drag the slider up or down till it shows about 5GB or enter it manually in the Size box to the right – note: the Lion image file is about 4GB but needs room to expand.

For 1 partition making the whole USB drive an install dive under Partition Layout: choose 1 Partition.

For 2 partitions like we did, then under Partition Layout: choose 2 Partitions.

For Flash Drive click on the drive listed in the left hand column of Disk Utility and select the Partition tab.

For DVD insert your DVD and select the disk image and click the Burn button and when it is finished skip to step 16.

Either open the image file from the File menu or drag it from a Finder window into the Disk Utility’s left hand column.

Open Disk Utility in OS X and insert your Flash drive.

Click Show Package Contents and find the InstallESD.dmg image file in the Contents, SharedSupport folder.

Open the Applications folder and right-click on the Lion installer.

#INSTALL MAC OS X LION FROM USB DOWNLOAD#

Download Lion from the Mac App Store but don’t install it yet.

Back those app files up though in case you lose your flash drive. That way you have a single disk to restore your OS and your apps. We chose a 16GB drive instead and created two partitions on it, one for Lion and one for our downloaded, non-Mac App Store apps. We tried this with a 4GB drive and Disk Utility would not burn the Lion install image saying it was too small. You will need a USB flash drive of at least 5GB. Do this before you install Lion but after you download it from the Mac App Store. The only way to do this is to use your computer’s restore disk to reinstall Snow Leopard or an earlier version of OS X. But the only way to do that is on a system that doesn’t already have Lion installed. Some other sites have posted that you can re-download the file. If you already upgraded to Lion the install image is deleted by default and it is already too late. In order to do this you will need the OS X Lion installation file. A clean install usually fixes these kinds of problems. This is a backup plan so you don’t have to take your computer to Apple to fix it if the hard drive or SSD drive won’t boot anymore. While the first two and last option are good reasons, the third is the most important.

Your are a geek and trying technical stuff on a computer is fun.

A future hard drive crash might leave you unable to install from the Mac App Store or the new Lion Recovery feature.

Forces user to clear out old file and app clutter that is not used anymore saving drive space.

Clean install of an OS is usually more stable.

Why would someone want to create an install disk instead of install Lion on top of their old OS X installation the way Apple wants? While it seems to work well in our experience, here are a few reasons to go through the trouble:

#INSTALL MAC OS X LION FROM USB HOW TO#

In the case of the Flash Drive we will also show you how to put two partitions on one 8GB or larger flash drive so that you will also have all your Mac apps on the drive ready to install after you install the OS. For now those are your only two options since Macs won’t boot from an SD card. We will show you how to create your own installation DVD or USB Flash Drive. A USB Flash drive version will become available in the future, but there is a way to get a clean install from a DVD or USB Flash Drive now with some effort. Apple disregarded these concerns with the release of Mac OS X 10.7 Lion by only allowing the initial release in the Mac App Store for download. Installing a new operating system over the old one can create problems with stability.

Install mac os x lion from usb