Installing Mac OS X Lion and making an installer backup

Finally decided to upgrade to OS X Lion and check what all the fuzz is all about, Lion no longer support PowerPC apps which is the one thing so far that I dont like but could live with it.



So far in my opinion its like Snow Leopard with a twist of features from iOS. For a full list of all the new features check this link. The download took forever on my connection the total file size is 3.76GB.

The installation from the Mac App Store is straightforward, after download it would run installation and then restart and should be done in around 25-30 minutes.

But before you go ahead and install Lion you should  make a backup of the installer. Apple removes the installer after being installed. So incase you want to reinstall Lion you have to redownload  that huge file from the App Store again( by holding Option key then clicking on installed button) or from the new feature Mac Restore which is a utility tool used when you boot up the computer, you have option to use Time Machine, Reinstall Lion (requires WIFI connection), Online Help and  Disk Utility.


To make a backup of the installer:

1. The installer is called  Install Mac OS X Lion.app and it should have been downloaded to /Applications.

2. Control+click the installer, and choose Show Package Contents

3. Go to Contents > Shared Support > InstallESD.dmg

Now use the DiskUtility to copy the file to a flash drive or another hard drive.

Note: I tried burning it to a DVD and it always fails to boot. Also even though the file is 3.7GB it wont fit in a 4G Flash  drive. So be sure you have a 8G USB drive.

4. On DiskUtility, drag and drop the InstallESD.dmg file on the resource pane, plugin your HD or Flash Drive. Click on the Restore option, and drag and drop the resources to the specified fields.

Once done, restart your computer and hold down the Option key. Select the Flash Drive to boot.

2 thoughts on “Installing Mac OS X Lion and making an installer backup

  1. Actually there is another alternative. Get a refund. That’s what I did. I was so pissed off that these guys failed to give a heads up to Mac users when they must have known that there product didn’t work with Lion that I emailed and demanded a refund. I had to go through a couple of “you agreed to this and that” emails back from them but after pressing the issue I was given a full refund on my subscription. I moved to Crashplan and so far I’m very happy. With Carbonite my initial backup took more than a month for 100GB of data. That sucked considering that I have 30/30 fiber optic connection. Carbonite didn’t give me the ability to take advantage of that huge bandwidth. Crashplan, on the other hand, lets me take advantage of my fast connection by giving me the option to set my own limit of how much bandwidth it can use. I’m able to backup 170GB with them in less than a week. Plus, Crashplan isn’t nearly as big a memory hog as Carbonite is.

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