How to Make a Bootable Install Disk of Mac OS X Lion

Alex Heath (2:52 pm PDT, Jul 20 2011)

Apple has released Mac OS X Lion in the Mac App Store for $30. Separately, Apple will also begin offering Lion on a USB thumb drive in Apple stores come August. Right now, you can grab Lion from the Mac App Store as a 4GB download.

After you’ve downloaded Lion, it would be wise it back up your install app so that you don’t have to re-download it next time you want to install Lion. You can also make a bootable DVD install disk of Lion to use on your other machines. Keep reading to learn how…

Step 1: Download OS X Lion from the Mac App Store.

Step 2: Once you have the “Install Mac OS X Lion” app download to your Applications folder, navigate to that app in Finder. Right click the install app and click “Show Package Contents.”

How to Make a Bootable Install Disk of Mac OS X Lion

Step 3: Navigate to Contents > SharedSupport and select the “InstallESD.dmg.”

How to Make a Bootable Install Disk of Mac OS X Lion

Step 4: Copy the InstallESD.dmg to your desktop.

How to Make a Bootable Install Disk of Mac OS X Lion

Step 5: Now we’re going to make our bootable DVD. Open Disk Utility on your Mac (located in the Utilities folder) and find the “Burn” option.

Step 6: Select Burn and choose the InstallESD.dmg file that you saved to your desktop.

How to Make a Bootable Install Disk of Mac OS X Lion

Step 7: Insert a blank DVD and let Disk Utility write to the disk. Once completed, your bootable DVD should launch as a new volume on your desktop.

How to Make a Bootable Install Disk of Mac OS X Lion

That’s it! You should now have a bootable install disk of OS X Lion to use on all of your authorized Macs!

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47 comments »

Dipen Patel
Dang it! i already installed it :(

Yaniv Levy
To redownload the installer on a computer running OS X Lion, press and
hold the Option key while you click the Purchases tab. If the button to
the right of the Install Mac OS X Lion item doesn’t change to
“Install” and allow you to download Lion, use Spotlight to search for
“Install Mac OS X Lion” on your computer.

Daniel Silfver
I just get the option to buy it again by following your instructions. Spotlight can’t find any files either. So how am I supposed to get hold of the file again after installation without paying for it?

Ryan Fitzpatrick
I installed also. Any way to make a bootable disc after installation?

jnjewlz
If you have Time Machine running it may have caught it. Otherwise probably not as it deletes upon installation completion.

http://twitter.com/fadhilazman Fadhil Azman
Time machine, I installed Lion before I read through the tutorial. Felt quite, stupid really. Before I installed Lion, I did a final backup in Time Machine. Sooo relieved I found Install Mac OS X Lion (: Burning now!
Jaya Prasad Rao
Great, downloading now and going to make DVD to save some bandwidth. Thanks.
http://twitter.com/iPhoneMac168 iPhoneMac168
can it be installed with other Mac users without authorize user?
http://twitter.com/iPhoneMac168 iPhoneMac168
can it be installed as a fresh mac user?
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100001227289544 Arian Darvishi
can it be installed with other Mac users without authorize user?
http://twitter.com/mrjoakim Joakim Östlind
Is it possible to make a bootable USB stick the same way?
JayKay
im in between downloading another 2 hors to go, can you tell me do i have to make this disk brfore installing lion or i can also do that after the installation.

Anonymous
Before!!! Otherwise the installer will delete the file once the installation is finished.

Bartlomiej Baraniec
I’m thinking of getting new MacMini, they don’t have CD/DVD drive but they are shipped with Lion already installed. I have spare SSD drive so first thing I would like to do is to install SSD drive and make it my iOS drive and spare 500GB will be for data. What my are options here?

http://www.facebook.com/LASERmanPL Emil Furmaniak
New Mini’s should come with install discs as usual for all Mac’s

http://twitter.com/Asad87 Asad Naqvi
There is no DVD/CD Drive so they would not. Most likely a USB drive.

http://www.facebook.com/LASERmanPL Emil Furmaniak
New Mini’s should come with install discs as usual for all Mac’s
http://www.facebook.com/LASERmanPL Emil Furmaniak
New Mini’s should come with install discs as usual for all Mac’s

JayKay
comeon cult of mac answer my question below, im about to finish download OSXLion

Bartlomiej Baraniec
I’ve read somewhere that Lion will remove installation file after upgrade, so make a copy of it before installing and then you can make bootable CD

JayKay
Thanx man, but if i make it before than from where i’ll start installing from the same source?
Bartlomiej Baraniec
Yes, after you download Lion auto install should start. Just cancel it and make Bootable CD, afterwards you can install Lion. It doesn’t really matters what you do first. You need to remember only that Lion will remove it’s installation file after upgrade.
JayKay
I know i sound stupid, but sounding stupid is better than becoming stupid.

Anonymous
Damn. You should mention, that the back-up has to be performed BEFORE you do the actual installation – otherwise the installer will delete the file when the installation has completed.
Is there a way to download the installer again? It just says “Installed” in the App Store now, making it impossible to download it again.

Jonny Harris
If you option click “purchased” in the app store you have the option to reinstall and can download the install file again, hope this helps

Ryan Fitzpatrick
Thank you!

http://twitter.com/elektro3000 Elko Elektro
Luckily I´ve created a second system partition for Lion-testing. So I can download the Installer a second time on the old system …
http://twitter.com/ggore Glenn Gore
That’s what snagged me. When I installed Lion there were no instructions like this on what to do if you need to install Lion on multiple computers without having each one download the whole thing. So I let the installation on the first machine complete and found that the install file had deleted itself. These instructions are still not complete and do not mention that you should close the Lion installation program when it launches, then go in and copy out the .dmg file to your desktop, a thumbdrive, wherever, so that if you need to you can use that file to install to other machines or make a backup disk or drive.
http://twitter.com/ggore Glenn Gore
That’s what snagged me. When I installed Lion there were no instructions like this on what to do if you need to install Lion on multiple computers without having each one download the whole thing. So I let the installation on the first machine complete and found that the install file had deleted itself. These instructions are still not complete and do not mention that you should close the Lion installation program when it launches, then go in and copy out the .dmg file to your desktop, a thumbdrive, wherever, so that if you need to you can use that file to install to other machines or make a backup disk or drive.

Anonymous
Not here? It just says “Installed” with no option to reinstall or anything. Not even with Opt-click or CTRL-click. Nothing.
I have a MacBook Pro as well. Is it possible to download the installer with my Apple-ID without having to pay for it again?
Andrew Proudlove
I made a copy of the file once it had downloaded and followed the steps to copy the installer.dmg to my computer and have managed to restore it to a Kingston 16GB USB disk following the steps in the guide.
I have also managed to install Lion on one of my other Macs by plugging the USB in and running the installer under Snow Leopard. Worked fine and the install went without any issues.
The only thing that I can’t do and I don’t know why, is boot a mac from the USB disk in order to run the installer (i.e. a clean install) or the repair utilities.
I have made sure that the USB was journaled and set as GUID before I restored the Lion image onto it but I can’t get it to work. Any ideas anyone?
Cheers

Anonymous
reboot holding down the Option key.

Lynn Norris
You can you can also make a bootable USB drive! Partition and configure your USB drive in GUID bootable disk and then restore the disk from the image above! Reboot holding down option key and install from USB drive!! It’s that easy!

Anonymous
Or a bootable SD card (for newer iMacs or those with a card reader).

JayKay
how much time this cd takes to finish
Anonymous
It is too big for a 4GB flash drive. It is reported as 3.7x in Finder but alas once mounted and extracted it is well over 4GB. (Just a friendly note!)

Anonymous
… but you don’t need to extract and mount it on the flash drive; it’s the disk image itself (at 3.7GB) that needs to go on the drive.

http://twitter.com/VLockley Vance Lockley
I just found the lion installer on my time machine back up…. lucky :)
http://twitter.com/VLockley Vance Lockley
I just found the lion installer on my time machine back up…. lucky :)
http://www.facebook.com/mikael.glad Mikael Glad
If you already have install the Lion then the installer are gone from your mac.
But there is one thing you can do.
1 Start App store
2 Under purchased alt click on the Lion, then you can download Lion again.
http://www.facebook.com/mikael.glad Mikael Glad
If you already have install the Lion then the installer are gone from your mac.
But there is one thing you can do.
1 Start App store
2 Under purchased alt click on the Lion, then you can download Lion again.

Stacey Schwingle
what is the resulting file name? thanks. :)

http://www.facebook.com/mikael.glad Mikael Glad
InstallESD.dmg
http://www.facebook.com/mikael.glad Mikael Glad
Sorry for late answer. When you alt click on Lion in the purchased page then you need to alt click on the install button.

Anonymous
Help!
I installed Lion at work on an older iMac without any problem. Before doing so, I created a boot disk following these instructions in order to install on my Home system. (I did use my iTunes account to purchase the O/S – I was just trying to save the network congestion.)
At home, it seemed to install, but upon reboot, I get the grey linen background with a small dialog in the middle entitled “Mac OS X utilities”. There are 4 options, none of which work:
1) Restore from Time Machine Backup – it finds my time machine backup without any problem, but it cannot find the main disk in the imac.
2) Reinstall Mac OS X – When this option asks me to pick a disk, it sees the disk, but says that it is locked.
3) Get Help Online – haven’t tried that yet.
4) disk utility – with this I have repaired the disk permissions, verified the disk and all seems ok, but options 1 and 2 above still go nowhere.
I’ve tried to boot from my Snow Leopard disk, but it seems to not be a bootable disk (I’m a developer and burned it from the development site – I installed Snow Leopard everywhere via a double click.
Does anyone have any clue how to get out of this? I’m about to put in a new disk and install from Leopard onward – all to save a few hours of downloading! :-(
Any help is appreciated.
Dave
Binith Anto
I just bought the MBA, with Lion preinstalled.. Can I make an install disc from this to update Snow Leopard on the old system.?
Anonymous
Used these directions (after download, before installation) and they worked perfectly. The after download and before installation part is key. I had to re-download as I had already installed on another machine. Fortunately, our site is blessed with an OC-12 pipe…

About the author

Alex Heath is a news contributor at Cult of Mac. He also covers jailbreak news and reviews. He previously served as an editor for iDownloadBlog. You can find out more about him on his personal site and also follow him on Twitter.

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Posted in How-To, Top stories | Tagged: Mac DVD copy, Mac OS X Lion, tutorial |