MacOS – Installing OS X on secondary SSD

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I have a MacBook Pro 17" Late 2011.
Today I removed to optical drive and installed a SSD (where the HDD was) and moved the HDD to the optical drive location.

Now I want to make the SSD my primary drive, and use the HDD for storage only.
the problem is that I can't clone all the HDD to the SSD because the former has 750GB and the latter is 250.

I only want to install the OS to the SSD. I don't mind installing all other apps manually afterward, but I'm just not sure what should I do next.

How do I install only OS X on the SSD and make it the main boot disk?

Best Answer

  1. Download the installer to the current system
  2. While it downloads, partition the SSD as GPT/OS X Extended
  3. Run the installer and install the OS onto the SSD instead of the current boot drive
  4. Use Startup Disk preference pane to set the new SSD as the boot volume default - NVRAM points to the SSD for all subsequent boots
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