MacOS – What methods are available to (re)install Lion on a Mac

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With genuine Lion install media being a rarety (and only included on certain newer Macs), there are a lot of queries by users on how they are best able to re-install (or even simply install) Lion on their computers.

I think it would be very useful to have a single canonical answer that is able to present every sensible install option on a single page, from which machines include the USB install media to how to use Internet Recovery, and all the homebrew options of self burning an image to DVD etc inbetween.

So, what methods are you aware of, or have you used, to re-install Lion on your Mac?

Please try to include 1 answer per answer, and detail it as fully as possible in order to prevent duplicate answers, or answers that contain bits of the method etc. Feel free to edit others answers to increase the detail level. Try not to link to existing guides or external webpages without summarising or paraphasing, it is far better to include the information directly on this site.

Best Answer

Create a bootable OS X Lion USB stick or DVD based on the Mac App Store download

  1. Buy and download Lion from the Mac App Store. The installer should show up in your Applications folder.
  2. Right-click on the installer and hit “Show Package Contents”. Navigate to Contents/SharedSupport and look for a file called InstallESD.dmg.
  3. Open up Disk Utility and drag the DMG file into the left-hand sidebar. If you’re burning it to a DVD, insert your DVD, select the disk image in the sidebar, and hit the “Burn” button. Skip down to the last step to use it.
  4. If you want to burn Lion to a USB flash drive, plug it in and click on it in the left-hand sidebar in Disk Utility. Go to the Partition tab and select “1 Partition” from the dropdown menu. Choose “Mac OS Extended (Journaled)” on the left.
  5. Hit the “Options” button under the partition table and choose “GUID Partition Table”. You’ll need this to make the drive bootable on a Mac. Hit the “Apply” button when you’re done to format your drive (note: it will erase everything on the drive).

  6. Click on the “Restore” tab, choose the InstallESD.dmg file as the source and your flash drive as the destination. Hit the “Apply” button and it will create your bootable USB drive.

  7. Reboot into OS X and hold the option key when you hear the startup chime. You can boot into your DVD or flash drive from there.

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