How can I put a Lion installer on a Flash Drive?

Question

Could someone please list the steps to make a backup Lion install on a flash drive? Is it as simple as copying the Lion installer?

If, as you suggest below, your question is really "How to make a Lion installer if I don't have a Mac with (at least) Snow Leopard on it?" then that is a very different question.

JW8 · Accepted Answer · 2011-11-04 03:34:57Z

up vote 2 down vote accepted

Your best bet is to follow the instructions on this page.

Things you'll need:

Flash drive bigger than 4 GB (8 GB+ would be best)
InstallESD.dmg (extracted from the OS X Lion App, if you've saved it prior to the upgrade)

There's an alternate method mentioned here.

Note: If you don't have the Lion Install App, follow the instructions on this page to download it again.

answered Nov 4 '11 at 3:34

JW8
3,9191521

	Thanks, great pointers. The problem with the first method - for me - is that I don't have the SL base system. I could rebuild one, but I'm lazy. The problem with the second solution is that it's obviously dicey. Maybe I will just buy the Apple dongle... – David DelMonte Nov 4 '11 at 14:14
	DON'T buy the Apple dongle… it's a terrible deal. It's expensive, it doesn't create a recovery partition, and it won't let you re-download from the Mac App Store if you need to later. Also, if you buy a new Mac in a year, it probably won't work with that either. – TJ Luoma Nov 11 '11 at 2:35

1 Answer