Reinstalling lion on formatted drive

Hello Lion Community,
I am having an issue with one of my users computers. We want to replace the drive in her macbook pro but dont have a way to reinstall lion (lion was not upgraded from the app store but came on the machine). I cant see lion on the app store anymore with the recent release of mountain lion, and was wondering how i could reinstall lion on this new (or future reformatted) drives.

If you start the computer while holding ⌘ R it will load OS X Recovery.
This works even if you completely removed the drive and replaced it with an empty one. OS X Recovery will enable you to reinstall the OS originally installed on the Mac. Read more:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4718
OS X Internet Recovery
If you happen to encounter a situation in which you cannot start from the Recovery System, such as your hard drive stopped responding or you installed a new hard drive without OS X installed, new Mac models introduced after public availability of OS X Lion or OS X Mountain Lion, automatically use the OS X Internet Recovery feature if the Recovery System (Command-R method above) doesn't work. OS X Internet Recovery lets you start your Mac directly from Apple's Servers.
Some computers that did not ship with OS X Lion or OS X Mountain Lion installed may have a software update available that allows them to use Lion Internet Recovery.
I've tried it. It works
For computers prior to the Lion era, the preferred method is to reinstall the OS from its original system installation DVD. However, as the note above indicates, some computers shipped with Snow Leopard in the few months leading up to Lion may have the option to use Lion Internet Recovery. Exactly which models qualify is difficult to determine.

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Tried updating Macbook to Yosemite - drive crashed - now trying to reinstall Lion on new drive but it is 'temporarily unavailable' HELP PLEASE

Last night, I tried updating my Macbook to Yosemite. It crashed mid way - telling me the drive needs repairing.
I am now following these instructions below. I backed up all of my work before the update, however not my iTunes / iPhoto. I would like to do this. My next step is to reinstall Lion on my external hard drive however it is 'temporarily unavailable'.
Does anyone know a way around this? I assume you can no longer install Lion cos Apple move so quickly.
These are the instructions I am following at the moment :
Installing Mavericks but disk damaged, no recovery or safe modes
Help appreciated!

I don't understand why some online forums are saying to click "erase." This is a brand new external hard without any files on it.
Just use Disk Utility to erase the drive. Select HFS+ (Journaled). It should then become a Mac HFS+ drive.
Also, if I use time machine, will my files be deleted off my computer and only saved on the external hard drive, or will it still be on my computer as well as the external hard drive? I have never backed up my files, so please explain to me what I should do and whether I will have files in both places.
TM is for backing up stuff. It woudn't make much sense to be a "backup" if it deleted the originals of the stuff it was backing up would it? So you end up with the source (original) stuff and the destination backup.
Lastly, if I am thinking about updating my software to a newer version (such as OX lion) is it better to back up files now or wait till after I update the software? I am not sure if it makes a difference.
I always say never ever update your system without a backup to fall back on in case something should go wrong with the update, and in the case of lion, you don't like it, and want to go back to Snow Leopard. So yes, it makes a big difference!
Update:
The following is for 10.4 but it's good enough to show you the erase operation in disk utility:
Erasing a disk or volume
You might also want to look at this:
Format Your Hard Drive Using Disk Utility
Finally, TM isn't the only way to back stuff up. There are many 3rd party backup utilities as well. Two of the more popular ones are Cabon Copy Cloner and Super Duper.

Reinstall lion via flash drive

Hi, I have a macbook pro with Lion loaded on it and the mail has become unusable. I'm wondering if I should do a backup of my stuff with time machine then reinstall Lion. My problem is I took out my dvd drive and installed a SSD to boot from in that spot so I don't have a functioning dvd drive.
Isn't there a way to download a disk image or something onto a flash drive of the OS and reinstall it? And if so could anyone walk me through it like I'm a 10 yr old as I'm somewhat computer literate but way behind most of you.
Thanks in advance for your help.

http://www.macworld.com/article/161069/2011/07/make_a_bootable_lion_installer.ht ml

Reinstalling lion without wiping drive

i need to reinstall lion without wiping my drive because i haven't made a backup yet. how do i do this?
thanks.
carl

Can't you first make the backup?
Reinstalling Lion
Boot to the Recovery HD: Restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the COMMAND and R keys until the menu screen appears. Alterhatively, restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the OPTION key until the boot manager screen appears. Select the Recovery HD and click on the downward pointing arrow button.
Repair the Hard Drive and Permissions: Upon startup select Disk Utility from the main menu. Repair the Hard Drive and Permissions as follows.
When the recovery menu appears select Disk Utility. After DU loads select your hard drive entry (mfgr.'s ID and drive size) from the the left side list. In the DU status area you will see an entry for the S.M.A.R.T. status of the hard drive. If it does not say "Verified" then the hard drive is failing or failed. (SMART status is not reported on external Firewire or USB drives.) If the drive is "Verified" then select your OS X volume from the list on the left (sub-entry below the drive entry,) click on the First Aid tab, then click on the Repair Disk button. If DU reports any errors that have been fixed, then re-run Repair Disk until no errors are reported. If no errors are reported click on the Repair Permissions button. Wait until the operation completes, then quit DU and return to the main menu.
Reinstall Lion: Select Reinstall Lion and click on the Continue button.
Note: You can also re-download the Lion installer by opening the App Store application. Hold down the OPTION key and click on the Purchases icon in the toolbar. You should now see an active Install button to the right of your Lion purchase entry. There are situations in which this will not work. For example, if you are already booted into the Lion you originally purchased with your Apple ID or if an instance of the Lion installer is located anywhere on your computer.

Reinstall lion on empty drive

Hi,
I am trying to fix my mate's MacBook Air, which wouldn't boot. After booting from an external drive I used disk utilty to try and repair the internal drive but got an error saying "invalid node structure' or something like that and that it could not be repaired. So I erased the internal drive with the intention of just reinstalling snow leopard. However, I hadn't realised that it was running Lion...
So now I have an erased internal drive on the MacBook but I do have Time Machine backups on an external drive. How can I restore one of these backups off the external drive? I don't know how to reinstall Lion as it doesn't come with a disk like the previous os x versions have...
Any help on how to restore one of the Time Machine backups (or reinstall Lion without having to repurchase it) would be greatly appreaciated!
Cheers.

I repaired the Time Machine drive using disk utility as it showed errors when i verified it. That went fine but when I tried again to boot from it the same thing happened... It shows the Time Machine drive when holding option at startup but when i click it, it just gives the grey screen with the question mark folder... Whats going on?
Anyway, I booted from my external bootable drive (different to his external time machine drive) and loaded the app store. I logged in with his details but when I searched for Lion, it didn't say anything about already being purchased... it just showed the price. I looked in the purchased tab and it had nothing in there...
How can I download Lion without paying for it again? It was paid for when the computer was bought so we should not be charged again (IMO)...

I am having sporadic issues after new hard drive install and recovery using Time Machine. The same sluggish response, start up screen pixelating...If I reinstall Lion will it wipe out other applications? My HD was formatted and partitioned correctly, I ha

I am having sporadic issues after new hard drive install and recovery using Time Machine. The same sluggish response, start up screen pixelating...If I reinstall Lion will it wipe out other applications? My HD was formatted and partitioned correctly, I have a late 2009 iMac.

Use the trackpad to scroll, thats what it was designed for. The scroll bars automatically disappear when not being used and will appear if you scroll up or down using the trackpad.
This is a user-to-user forum and most people will post on here if they have problems. You very rarely get people posting to say there update went smooth. The fact is the vast majority of Mountain Lion users will not be experiencing any major problems with the OS, or maybe with apps which are not compatible, but thats hardly Apple's fault if developers don't update their apps.

Easiest way to reinstall Mac OS X 10.6.8 over Lion without formatting hard drive!

What is the easiest way to reinstall Mac OS X 10.6.8 (Snow Leopard)
over Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion) without formatting the hard drive!
Any ideas?

You can do a dual boot.
In Lion, open Applications->Utilities->Disk Utility.
Click on the actual hard drive (not the 'Macintosh HD' partition).
Click on the 'Partitions' tab; then the + a the bottom of the 'Partition Layout'. Resize your new partition if you want.
Make sure the format is 'Mac OS Extended (Journaled).
Click Options and make sure the partition map scheme is GUID partition table. (can't remember if this is necessary).
Click Apply.
Insert your SL DVD and restart. During the restart press and hold 'C' so it boots from the DVD.
Choose your new partition to install SL.
One word of caution, you may lose your Lion Recovery HD partition. If so, you would need to reinstall Lion on top of itself to recreate it.
In terminal type... diskutil list and see if you see that partition after your SL install.

How do I wipe new iMac (3/2012) H.Drive and reinstall Lion and the preinstalled application?

I just bought a 27" iMac (3/2012) and migrated the data from my Mac Pro into the new iMac. It's now overloaded with the settings and files that I should have just put on an external drive, but I didn't. I want to erase everything and start with what OS and applications when I purchased it. It is running Lion OS X Version 10.7.3. Before the app store I understood how to do this when there was a recovery disc for the OS and Applications but need help on how to get it back to a clean new system (and I do not need to save any settings or information on the new imac).
Really appreciate the help
CJ

Install or Reinstall Lion from Scratch
If possible backup your files to an external drive or second internal drive.
Boot to the Recovery HD:
Restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the COMMAND and R keys until the menu screen appears. Alternatively, restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the OPTION key until the boot manager screen appears. Select the Recovery HD and click on the downward pointing arrow button.
Erase the hard drive:
Select Disk Utility from the main menu and click on the Continue button.
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 Erase tab in the DU main window.
Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Erase button and wait until the process has completed.
Quit DU and return to the main menu.
Reinstall Lion: Select Reinstall Lion and click on the Install button.
Note: You can also re-download the Lion installer by opening the App Store application. Hold down the OPTION key and click on the Purchases icon in the toolbar. You should now see an active Install button to the right of your Lion purchase entry. There are situations in which this will not work. For example, if you are already booted into the Lion you originally purchased with your Apple ID or if an instance of the Lion installer is located anywhere on your computer.

How do you format/reinstall Lion on an iMac which came with no disc?

Hi,
How do you format and reinstall Lion on a iMac which came with no disc? It was purchased new from an Apple store but came with no disc.

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4177979 - Reinstalling Lion on a computer that originally came with Lion installed.
How to deal with future problems without a Lion Install Disk - https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3552183
How to reinstall Lion on a new drive? - https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3570140

Erase hard drive and reinstall Lion

Hello Everybody,
Is there a straightforward way to erase the hard drive of my imac and reinstall Lion. I have purchased the mac from my friend but I believe the HD hasn't been completely wiped as I can still see some of his files.
OSX Lion was purchased and installed but is there a way to completely delete the HD, reinstall Lion and start with fresh computer?
Thanks!

I'm in the same boat but a slightly different twist. It appears, from talking to Apple support, that MobileMe corrupted some of my data on my iMac. Everything is backed up. It appears that some of the preferences have been corrupted because my scrolling doesn't work the way I set it. MobileMe propagated this corruption over to my Macbook Pro but I'm living with it right now. I turned MobileMe off on my iPad2 and my iPhone. I'll go and correct the issue but then the incorrect will turn itself back on. Even repairing permissions fixed stuff and they came back later. I chose to reinstall Lion. I booted CTRL+R, chose ERASE with the correct Mac format then double checked everything before reinstalling Lion. NO LUCK. Lion comes back but like the person above said, there are files still there so ERASE doesn't ERASE EVERYTHING. I still have issues with my preferences. I've installed the Lion Recovery Disk Assistant and have it loaded on a 4gb thumb drive. Now what I want to do is erase...blotto...flatline...zap... you name it, I want it GONE. Then I want to format and reinstall Lion from a totally naked disk drive. Anyone have any ideas? Thanks very much. It was right here that I found out about the Recovery Assistant!

How can I format my primary HD and reinstall Lion?

So my iMac has been running very slowly lately, and I've had some tech issues (see the fruitless help thread at http://hintsforums.macworld.com/showthread.php?p=634569), so I'm tempted to just wipe my hard drive clean and reinstall Lion.
I have a backup HD, so I should have sufficient hardware to do this. I just have a couple questions about the mechanics:
1. How do I format my primary hard drive? I assume this is straightforward.
2. Is it possible to reinstall Lion without an install CD? I downloaded Lion off the App Store, and I'd hate to think that because of that I'm stuck with the installation I have.
Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks!

OS X Lion: About Lion Recovery
Summary
OS X Lion includes a new feature called Lion Recovery that includes all of the tools you need to reinstall Lion, repair your disk, and even restore from a Time Machine backup without the need for optical discs.
And buried in the link is also this:
the storage device to use the GUID partition scheme and the Mac OS Extended (Journaled) format, which are required to install Lion
Formating a disk is done with Disk Utility.
Regards,
Colin R.

Sarafi won't start up. Hard drive crashed, reinstalled Lion from Safe Mode. and Safari still won'topen. I get an error message. There are no files in the extensions folder.

How do I clear the error in Safari? I've reinstalled Lion 3 times and the error won't clear.

Well Apple Suupport is still tops in every book.
The fix for my problem was so ridiculously simple, I can't beleived it worked.
But somehow the mouse install disk (stuck in the drive) was disrupting the start up. I was instructed to take the batteries out of the wireless mouse.
IT WORKED.
Not sure if anyone that's had this similar problem is using wireless devices, but take the batteries out of them, use plug in devices to work around the problem, eject the CD and if you luck out like I did, it'll work
Thanks Apple my faith is renewed

I am unable to erase hard drive after a crash, also cannot reinstall Lion because disk is locked. There seems to be nothing else to do, suggestions? Where do I go from here?

I downloaded Lion 100 days ago (conveniently after the 90 day tech support) now my HDD has crashed and it gets stuck at the apple screen. I then hold command R and go to disc utility try to repair, that doesn't work, and try to erase. But it says error, cannot unmount disk. I then try to reload Lion, but it says the disk is locked. Okay, so do I need a new hard drive? If so that's fine, I just cannot seem to erase this drive to reinstall lion. Also, I don't have a disk to reinstall OSx, as Lion is done via internet.

Wow, thanks. It did the trick. So now I am confused, do you think I still need to take in my Mac to see if there are some problems with the hard drive, or do you think I'm in the clear. I was going to get a new hard drive installed, because I thought that was the issue seeing as I couldn't access it during safe mode.

How do I install Mountain Lion AND format the hard drive?

I want to do a completely clean install of Mountain Lion.
I had Snow Leopard installed, upgraded to Mountain Lion (by buying it from the App Store) but how do I tell it to format the drive and then install Mountain Lion?

pforkes wrote:
I want to do a completely clean install of Mountain Lion.
I had Snow Leopard installed, upgraded to Mountain Lion (by buying it from the App Store) but how do I tell it to format the drive and then install Mountain Lion?
Snow Leopard would have needed to be installed on a properly formatted drive, so I don't understand why you would need to format it again to that same format.
Cheers
Pete

Had to reinstall Lion. Backed up music to external hard drive. When I plug in iPod msg says it's synced w/another iTunes library. Do i "erase and sync" and re-add music from the hard drive?

Had to reinstall Lion. Backed up my music to an external hard drive. When I plug in my iPod a prompt msg says it's synced w/another iTunes library and asks if I want to "erase and sync" (to what is now an empty library) or "Transfer purchases". Do i "erase and sync" and re-add music from the hard drive once that's done?

You just need to tell iTunes where the library is located. If you want it back on your internal drive, copy the entite iTunes folder. Follow the instructions below.
iTunes: How to move your music to a new computer (Mac or Windows):
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4527

Reinstalling lion on formatted drive

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