#Mac new hard drive os install how to
#Mac new hard drive os install mac os x
#Mac new hard drive os install install
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#Mac new hard drive os install mac os x

On the Mac OS X Lion screen, click Continue. In the Mac OS X Utilities window, click Reinstall Mac OS X and click Continue. Follow Steps 1 through 4 in this slideshow to properly format the drive. The drive must be formatted as Mac OS Extended (Journaled), and must have a GUID Partition Table. (If this doesn’t work, restart and hold down Command+Option+R, which should force your Mac into Lion Internet Recovery.)Ĭonnect a drive-a hard drive, a thumb drive, or the like-with at least 12GB of free space. The Mac OS X Utilities window you see when you boot into Lion Recovery and Lion Internet Recoveryīoot into recovery mode by holding down Command+R at startup you’ll eventually see a Mac OS X Utilities window.

The trick is to interrupt that process-safely-so you can grab the installer data and keep it. Once that data has been downloaded, Lion Recovery restarts your Mac, immediately installs the OS, and then deletes the installer data. Apple’s servers verify the Mac model and then, assuming it’s a Mac compatible with Lion Internet Recovery, provide the roughly 4GB of data for download. When you use Lion Internet Recovery to reinstall Lion, your Mac contacts Apple’s servers, identifies itself, and requests the appropriate Lion-install data. But because these may not be options if your Mac is having problems, it’s still good to have a bootable installer drive.) (You can also copy the Mac App Store version of the installer to your newer Mac, or download it-all 4GB of it-from the Mac App Store directly to that newer Mac, and then run the installer.

Those simpler instructions will create a drive that works with all current Lion-compatible Macs. As long as your downloaded installer is version 1.0.13 or later-select the installer in the Finder and use the Get Info command to check-there’s no need to perform the procedure below. Note: If you purchased Lion for another Mac, so you have a version of the Lion installer from the Mac App Store, you can use our original instructions for creating a bootable Lion-installer drive. (In our testing, the official OS X Lion USB Thumb Drive doesn’t work with Macs that shipped with Lion-it’s designed for installing the OS on pre-Lion Macs.)įortunately, it’s possible to create a bootable Lion installer even if your only Mac is a newer model, although doing so requires a bit more work.

#Mac new hard drive os install full

Apple does offer a utility for creating an emergency Lion Recovery drive but, like the standard Lion Recovery feature, this drive requires you to download the full 4GB of Lion each time you want to install-it’s better to have the full installer on a bootable drive. In other words, you don’t have a downloadable version of the installer unless you happened to purchase Lion for another, older Mac.

But if you have a Mac that debuted after Lion (any Mac from July 2011 or later), your Mac shipped with Lion pre-installed.

#Mac new hard drive os install how to

When Lion debuted, I explained how to create a bootable Lion-installer drive from the Mac App Store version of Lion. (Lion Internet Recovery is available on mid-2011-or-later Macs, as well as some older Macs that have received recent firmware updates.)

#Mac new hard drive os install install

And if you’ve got a Mac that doesn’t support Lion Internet Recovery-a version of Lion Recovery based on special firmware-recovery mode may not even be available if your Mac’s drive itself is having problems, whereas a bootable install drive will always be there for you. For starters, Lion Recovery doesn’t include the full Lion installer-it requires you to download nearly 4GB of data before you can reinstall Lion-whereas a bootable installer drive contains the entire Lion installer, making installation much, much faster. For example, if you want to install Lion on multiple Macs, a bootable installer drive can be more convenient than downloading or copying the entire Lion installer to each computer.īut even for troubleshooting, a bootable installer drive has advantages over Lion Recovery. But as I explained when Lion debuted, there are still good reasons to have a bootable installer disc or drive. It’s a convenient feature that, in theory, means you no longer have to carry a Mac OS X Install disc or a bootable external hard drive.