Installing lion on back up drive

I am presently downloading the Lion OS. I have partitioned another of my internal hard drives as a clone of my OS because I have been experiencing some issues with errors that have to be corrected by disk utility. Disk utility cannot repair disk errors on my MAC HD if I use it from the MAC HD hard drive, but, I can do the repair using the clone HD disk utility program. I want to install Lion OS on my clone drive also, what do I need to do that.
Otherwise, is there anything special I need to know about installing Lion over Snow Leopard 10.6.8?

Might be coincidence, might be a change in the power-on self test, might be something else entirely (though I don't know what.) I suggest you take the machine to an Apple Store for testing.

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HT4904 Help. I have an older 20 inch iMac and had Lion running on it but the internal hard drive died. I'm trying to install Lion on an external drive but it doesn't look like Lion Recovery is supported. I have Leopard installed but am stuck.

Hello,
My 20inch iMac's internal drive died and I'm trying to re-install Lion on an external drive. If I could get the Lion DMG file I think I'd be all set but am not sure how to do this. It doesn't look like the Lion Recovery feature is supported in my older iMac. And I have Leopard installed on the external drive but there's no AppStore to download the Lion DMG file.
Any suggestions?
Thanks,
-Lee

Without a bootable backup/clone or a Time Machine backup of your previous Snow Leopard installation or a saved copy of Lion's install app, you'll have to upgrade your Leopard volume to Snow Leopard (10.6.6+) so you can waste another hour or more DLing the Lion thing again.

How do I install Lion on new flash drive?

How do I install Lion on new flash drive?

For an emergency pocket size boot device?
Or something else?
Or, do you want to setup the Lion Installer for clean or reinstalls on flash memory card, which is what many use?
Create an OS X Lion Install disc
OS X Lion Install to Different Drive
How to create an OS X Lion installation disc MacFixIt
Migration Assistant Update for Mac OS X Snow Leopard
http://www.apple.com/support/lion/installrecovery/
http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13727_7-20080989-263/how-to-create-an-os-x-lion-ins tallation-disc
http://www.coolestguyplanettech.com/how-to-make-a-bootable-osx-10-8-mountain-lio n-disc-or-drive-from-the-downloaded-mountain-lion-app/
USB on Intel Macs has always supported booting, that is what MacBook users have had to deal with. With a Mac Pro you have four internal drive bays, Firewire, and all of those are more suited and capable.
Old thread, never die do they.

How to install lion cleaning the hard drive

I have a MacBook I am currently running Liuon but have previously installed Leopard and Snow Leopard without clearing the hard drive first.
The machine has now three operating systems installed and is running very slow.
It has been suggested that I make a copy of the hard drive, before erasing all the information and loading Lion on a clean hard drive.
How do i do this?

Install Lion to a blank drive or partition, including one created with the Disk Utility, and then either use the Migration Assistant or copy your files to the new system manually as desired.
(66830)

How do I install Lion on a bare drive?

When major OS versions are released I wipe a drive completely and install the new OS and my apps. I do not use Migration assistant. I install clean.. from scratch. Over the years this has helped maintain a very stable OS and eliminated 90% of slowdowns, reinstalls, and troubleshooting.
But.. how do I do that with Lion? I do not want to install 10.6. I want to use a bare drive and install 10.7.
Do I download 10.7 burn the download to disc then use that? Will the download allow burning a boot disc?
Thanks!

BackupLionBootable 10.7 Disk
Purchaseanddownload Lion from the Mac App Store on any Lion compatibleMacrunning Snow Leopard.
Right click on “Mac OS X     Lion”     installer and choose the option to     “Show Package Contents.”
Inside the Contents folder     that     appears you will find a SharedSupport     folder and inside the     SharedSupport folder     you will find the “InstallESD.dmg.” This is         the Lion boot disc image we have all been waiting for.
Copy “InstallESD.dmg” to         another folder like the Desktop.
Launch Disk Utility and click     the     burn button.
Select the copied “InstallESD.dmg” as the image to     burn,     insert a standard sized 4.7 GB DVD,     and wait for your new Lion Boot     Disc to come     out toasty hot.
With this disc you can boot any Lion compatible Mac, andinstall10.7 just like you installed previous version of Mac OS X. Youcaneven use Disk Utility's Restore function to image your Lion bootdiscimage onto a external drive suitable for performing a cleaninstallon a optical-drive-less MacBook Air, or Mac mini server.
Installing Lion clean
How will customers perform a clean     upgrade of Lion?
And how will IT departments install Lion across multiple     Macs?
The answer to these questions is a MacFirst Aid Kit, a specially formatted external hard drive thatcontains the required operating system and software to install Liononto any compatible Mac. All it takes is seven easy steps.
Purchase and download Lion from     the Mac App Store on any Lion compatible Mac running Snow Leopard.
Right click on “Mac OS X Lion”     installer and choose the option to “Show Package Contents.”
Inside the Contents folder that     appears you will find a SharedSupport folder and inside the     SharedSupport folder you will find the “InstallESD.dmg.” This is     the Lion boot disc image we have all been waiting for.
Launch Disk Utility and go     straight to the restore tab. Drag “InstallESD.dmg” the Source     field, and drag your external hard drive from the left side of the     Disk Utility window into the Destination field. Check Erase     Destination, and begin your restore. (It goes without saying this     process will erase everything on your external hard drive.)
Once Disk Utility's restoration is     complete you will be the proud owner of a Mac Frist Aid Kit capable     of booting and installing Lion clean. Test out your creation by     restarting any Lion compatible Mac while holding the option key, and     choose Mac OS Install ESD as the startup volume.
Once booted from the Lion enabled     partition on your external drive ou will have the opportunity to run     Disk Utility and erase your Mac's primary hard drive. From the Erase     tab select your Mac's primary hard drive and choose “Mac OS     Extended (Journaled)” as the format. Before you erase the drive     confirm you have a known good backup then click Erase…
With your Mac's primary hard drive wiped clean it is now time     to begin installing Lion. Quit Disk Utility to go back to the Lion     installer. Choose your Mac's primary hard drive as the destination,     and continue.
When the installation process is complete your Mac will have aclean copy of Lion installed on its primary hard drive, and you willhave an Mac First Aid Kit suitable for installing Lion on other Macsin the future.
Shipping software costs money, burns fuel, and requires a trip tothe store. By releasing Lion exclusively though the Mac App StoreApple is saving money, reducing its carbon footprint, and giving itscustomers convenience. Customers who own a MacBook Air or Mac miniserver will benefit most from the lack of installation media becauseApple saw it fit to ship these computers without a built-in opticaldrive. Performing a clean install of Lion is not required, but withan external hard drive it is easy to do across multiple Macs.
http://eggfreckles.net/tech/installing-lion-clean/

Installing Lion clean on hard drive with multiple partitions

I have a spring 2008 24" iMac running Snow Leopard.
I am about to put a new 2TB hard drive in it and after I do that I want to do a clean install of Lion on it.
I do not want to upgrade my Snow Leopard install to Lion. I will keep it on my back up drive as a fallback incase of serious workflow incompatiblities with the new OS.
For my workflow I create and use multiple partitions (Mac OS, Windows and multiple HFS+ for data) on my hard drive and I have seen that Lion creates it's own hidden recovery partition as well for the recovery functionality.
My questions are:
1) Will I have issues running Lion on a partition on a hard drive with multiple partitions that have different file systems?
2) If I install Lion into one of these partitions will it create it's recovery partition within the space of the partition it is being installed into?
3) I will be creating a clean install by downloading Lion using the App Store and then burning an installer DVD using instructions I found elsewhere and then using that to do the install on the new drive. Is that the best route to take?
All my current data I will have on a backup external hard drive and after I complete the Lion install on the new larger drive I will manually reinstall all my software and move my data back from my backup drive to the new drive one partition at a time except of course for OS partition. I keep all my real user data outside of that partition anyway.

I believe this article answers most of your questions.
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4718
or possibly
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4649
You will most likely run into the error message that "Some features of Mac OS X Lion are not supported for the disk" if you have multiple partitions set up, especially if they were not set up using Bootcamp and/or have serveral different file systems.
You can confirm that the Recovery Partition will not be installed by checking Disk Utility for your current partition map scheme.
This is most definitely not the end of the world as it is quite easy to create an external Recovery disk.
1) No, you shouldn't have issues running Lion, but Recovery HD will not be created.
2) No, and in your case it doesn't sound like it will be installed on your internal drive at all.
3) Yes. If you begin with an empty partition, then install Lion that would be considered a clean install.
Hope that helps.
Autumn

How do I install Lion on external hard drive? I have purchased and downloaded through App Store but do not know where the download is located so I can install.

I want to install Lion on an external hard drive. The OS was purchased and downloaded through the App Store but I do not know where the file is.

If you downloaded the installer it will be in your applications folder. Failing that use spotlight start typing Install and it should show up.
This is assuming you downloaded the installer from the app store, and didn't just install it onto your mac. If all you have done is install it on your mac. Go to your purchases Lion should show up. Then click download.
Here is the Support page for installing osx on an external drive.
OS X: Installing OS X on an external volume - Apple Support
Hope this helps.
PJRS

Cannot proceed with installing Lion on an external drive

Hi everyone,
I have a late 2008 MacBook Pro, 10.6.8 installed. I'm trying to install Lion on an external HDD connected via an ExpressCard/SATA adapter. The target HDD has GUID table with a single partition containing a couple of regular folders (no OS installed). I boot up my Snow Leopard OS, run the Lion installation, choose the external HDD and it starts the installation with no warnings.
Then when the progress bar reaches the end, I'm told to close all applications and restart. After the restart I'm suddenly booted to my old Snow Leo. I see a Mac OS Install Data folder on the external drive, but I cannot boot off it and cannot continue the installation.
I have a suspicion that the problem might be that I haven't formatted the drive and it contained some data when I started the installation, but I doubt this is the cause. I don't want to format the drive because it contains some necessary data.
If anyone encountered anything like that, please describe your cases.
Thanks a lot

Hi. Thanks a lot for the quick response. I bought Lion on the App Store but it's not downloading. It says "Waiting..." and has now for ten minutes. It's also trying to download the update to another app and it's saying "Waiting..." for that one too. Not sure what to do or what is going wrong.
Okay, just now the download started working. I would delete this reply but I don't see how to do it.

I have Tiger. Can I install Lion on an external drive?

I have an iMac Intel Core 2 Duo running Tiger. What I would like to do is install Lion on an external hard drive and have the ability to boot up using either Tiger or Lion as the occasion arises. Reason being, I have some software apps that would no longer run on anything higher than Tiger and would require $1200 worth of upgrades. While I plan to eventually make such upgrades (and perhaps buy a new Mac to put it all on), for now I'm seeking an interim solution.
In short, I want to take advantage of what Lion has to offer in the way of increased speed and flexibility (especially with internet surfing) while at the same time being able to boot up part of the time in Tiger to continue to run my older apps when needed.
So, can it be done? Install Lion on an external HD? Or do I need to install Snow Leopard first, then upgrade to Lion? Or is none of this possible without buying a new computer and just keeping my old machine to run Tiger with the older apps?

The short answer is yes, the somewhat longer answer is that you must should first install Snow Leopard. With the exception of Classic / OS 9 everything you do with Tiger should run fine in Snow Leo.
Lion System Requirements: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4949
Next you will need more memory. Consider Lion's specfied 2 GB minimum with a great degress of skepticism. That is a very small cage for this cat. 4 GB is a more realistic minimum.
If I interpret your system correctly, you have a mid-2009 iMac. It can address 8 GB memory. Lion will be very comfortable with that amount.
Message was edited by: John Galt

Install Lion on an external drive?

I have read the discussions on making a bootable backup of Lion on external hard drive or a USB drive. I am not clear on whether I can purchase Lion from the App Store and have it download on an external drive so that my Macbook with 10.6.8 will remain as is. I want to test drive Lion before giving up Snow Leopard. I use SuperDuper and have a bootable Snow Leopoard on an external hard drive. Addendum: It looks like I may need to upgrade from 2GB of ram to 4GB before using Lion. My question still stands though. Thanks.

It will download onto the computer from which you run the App Store. After it downloads do not install:
Make Your Own Lion Installer
1. After downloading Lion you must first save the Install Mac OS X Lion application. After Lion downloads DO NOT click on the Install button. Go to your Applications folder and make a copy of the Lion installer. Move the copy into your Downloads folder. Now you can click on the Install button. You must do this because the installer deletes itself automatically when it finishes installing Lion.
2. Get a USB flash drive that is at least 8 GBs. Prep this flash drive as follows:
Open Disk Utility in your Utilities folder.
After DU loads select your hard drive (this is the entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. Note the SMART status of the drive in DU's status area. If it does not say "Verified" then the drive is failing or has failed and will need replacing. SMART info will not be reported on external drives. Otherwise, click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.
Under the Volume Scheme heading set the number of partitions from the drop down menu to one. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Options button, set the partition scheme to GUID then click on the OK button. Click on the Partition button and wait until the process has completed.
Select the volume you just created (this is the sub-entry under the drive entry) from the left side list. Click on the Erase tab in the DU main window.
Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Options button, check the button for Zero Data and click on OK to return to the Erase window.
Click on the Erase button. The format process can take up to several hours depending upon the drive size.
3. Locate the saved Lion installer in your Downloads folder. CTRL- or RIGHT-click on the installer and select Show Package Contents from the contextual menu. Double-click on the Contents folder to open it. Double-click on the SharedSupport folder. In this folder you will see a disc image named InstallESD.dmg.
4. Plug in your freshly prepared USB flash drive. You are going to clone the InstallESD.dmg disc image to the flash drive as follows:
Open Disk Utility.
Select the USB flash drive from the left side list.
Click on the Restore tab in the DU main window.
Check the box labeled Erase destination.
Select the USB flash drive volume from the left side list and drag it to the Destination entry field.
Drag the InstallESD.dmg disc image file into the Source entry field.
Double-check you got it right, then click on the Restore button.
When the clone is completed you have a fully bootable Lion installer that you can use without having to re-download Lion.

I think I messed up by not installing Lion on an external drive when my install didn't work

I purchased Lion but was unable to install (just read other threads on Lion installation problems!). I was unable to repair my drive so after many days of putsing around I erased hard drive so I could repair it and then I reset my pram. All is well with my Imac and everything is running smoothly. Problem is that I was never able to install Lion (didn't think about usb drive), so can I get Lion from Itunes, or was that a wasted purchase since my drive was erased?

I don't think you understand. When I was unable to install I went to disk utility and try to repair my disk, that was unsuccessful and all other measures were as well. I had already purchased Lion. I did not save it to anything or copy it. I ended up having to erase my hard drive though and now I obviously don't have the prompt to install. When I go to the app store it is saying I have to purchase Lion again. I am asking if I do have to or is there a way that I didn't just throw away $19.99

Re-install lion using Apple Thumb drive

I am having some problems with the sleep fucntion and want to consider a re-install of Lion as a way to correct the problem.
I have a MacBook Pro, bought June 2011. I upgraded from Snow Leopard using the Apple Thumb drive.
Pretty much all advice for installing and re-installing Lion refers either to the downloaded version for the App Store or using a recovery file produced by the user after installation.
I am just wanting straighforward guidance on the process for doing a re-install of Lion using the Thumb drive or whatever process is proper.
I have a Time Machine set up with a Time Capsule. Not really sure if this could end up causing me more troubles using the stroed data/files. It may be those which are causing the troubles.
If necessary,I am fully prepared to use an external drive to capture my files (photos, music and iWork stuff) and then use these as I need to for restoring data.
Bottom line: how do I do a re-install of Lion using a MBP with an upgrade to Lion from Snow Leopard from a thumb drive from Apple?

Just plug in the thimb drive and reboot the unit. After you hear the startup sound press and hold the "Options" key. You willl get a one time boot screen where you can select the drive to boot to. Select the USB thumb drive.

Cannot install Lion on External Hard Drive

I have a brand new ssd in a hard drive enclosure and want to put lion on it before I install it into the computer, taking out the old hard drive (with SL on it). I got it from the app store, it installs until it has to restart, and then after it restarts and is installing is says cannot install because it cant create a recovery partition or something like that. How can I do this? Do I need to install the empty ssd, then have lion on a bootable usb and install from there? Thanks in advance.

Carbon Copy Cloner will make a bootable external drive. The old version is shareware if you can download it, the new version is commercial. It is a great program. I have been using it for years back to a G4. Many backups do not create a bootable drive.

How do i install lion on a different drive when i'm running mountain lion

Lotus notes is incompatible with 10.8. The app store will not let me redownload lion even though i paid for it. I do have the "installESD.dmg" and I get the message that the new system is newer so it won't install it. Any suggestions? I need to install 10.7 on an external drive as school starts next week and I have to do a bootcamp prior to learn the school's sytem of doing things. TIA. Welcome to the cloud way of doing things, I don't like it.
k

Use this program to create a Lion Install USB thumb drive.
Serial Serveur » Lion DiskMaker (US)
Then once it is created partition your internal drive or connect an external drive and Reboot the system and hold down the Option key. That will boot the system to a Boot Menu screen. Select the USB thumb that has the Lion installl files. Once the system starts fromthe installer Point it to either the external drive or the second partition you created.

I cannot install Lion to a backup drive for my new Mac Mini

I just bought the new Mac Mini with an i7 processor last week. I wanted to format a backup drive for it. When I tried to use the Lion Recovery partition on the new Mac Mini, I keep getting an error message that says it's incompatoble with the current model.
I also tried to use the Lion thumbdrive I purchased from Apple to see if that can be used, but it also give me the incompatible message.
Is there a special version of Lion that's only for the new Mac Mini's?
Any help is appreciated!

Read this, it will explain it: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4905
Mac mini (Mid 2011), MacBook Air (Mid 2011): Use Lion Recovery instead of OS X Lion USB Thumb Drive
Last Modified: September 01, 2011
Article: HT4905
Summary
Learn about using Lion Recovery or the built-in OS X Lion recovery partition rather than OS X Lion USB Thumb Drive with computers released after OS X Lion.
Products Affected
MacBook Air (13-inch, Mid 2011), MacBook Air (11-inch, Mid 2011), MacBook Air (Mid 2011), Mac mini (Mid 2011)
Use Lion Recovery to restore Mac computers released after OS X Lion. If you attempt to use the OS X Lion USB Thumb Drive, a message will appear stating that you cannot install this version of OS X on your computer. This is correct behavior to make sure you install only the correct and most up-to-date version of Mac OS X on your computer.
Note: You can also use the Lion Recovery Disk Assistant on your Mac to create a bootable image to make sure you recover the correct version of OS X Lion. To use the Lion Recovery Disk Assistant, you need to have your own USB drive.
Additional Information
If you have a network connection, you should receive the appropriate version of Mac OS X when using the built-in Recovery HD partition on Macs running Lion.
Learn more about Lion Recovery.

Installing lion on back up drive

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