MacOS – Downloading OS X Lion after the release of Mountain Lion

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I bought OS X Lion through the App Store long ago and installed it to my Mac Mini (Early 2011) which came with Snow Leopard bundled.

The Mac Mini was having some issues so I decided to format and reinstall using the Recovery Partition created by Lion. However, the process of downloading installation files was getting stuck and the installation did not advance, so I decided to install Snow Leopard instead and make the upgrade to OS X Lion from the App Store, like I did originally.

Sadly, I find that there's currently no way of downloading OS X Lion from Apple's site. What can I do? How can I get a hold of a product I paid for?

The Apple site prompts me to buy and install Mountain Lion which I don't want.

Best Answer

You can download apps you've purchased before (including OS X installers) from the Mac App Store application. Sign in and switch to the purchases tab:

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All of your previous purchases should appear, including the Lion installer:

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If you don't have the App Store, make sure you've updated to at least 10.6.6.

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