How to burn a Lion boot disc

Mac OS X Lion will debut in July, and this handy set of instructions from Egg Freckles will let you create a boot disc for installation. OS X Lion will be distributed via the Mac App Store, and you can download the installer files to your hard drive. Once you have the installer files, follow these steps to create your very own boot disc:

Use Finder to locate the Mac OS X Lion installer, right-click and select "Show Package Contents."
Find the SharedSupport folder and look for a file named "InstallESD.dmg." This is the Lion Boot Disc image.
Copy the "InstallESD.dmg" file to another folder, such as your desktop.
Launch Disk Utility and click the burn button.
Select the "InstallESD.dmg" copy as the image to burn, insert a DVD, and in a few minutes, you will have a brand new Lion Boot Disc.

These instructions won't do much for everyone right now since OS X Lion is still in the hands of the developers. Bookmark, Evernote or Instapaper this post for future use. You'll be glad you did when Lion rolls out next month.

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Source: http://eggfreckles.net/tech/burning-a-lion-boot-disc/

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Apple Mac OS X

Mac OS X Lion will debut in July, and this handy set of instructions from Egg Freckles will let you create a boot disc for installation....

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Erland

How much storage do I need on the DVD?

October 20 2011 at 11:45 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Jose Correa

You need to do this before you install OS X Lion. Because once it is installed, the install process deletes the installESD.dmg. So those of you who have installed it before, you're going to need to find a way to get your hands on that .dmg. My suggestion is download it from the almighty web. Make sure you dl the GM version.

July 21 2011 at 12:45 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

mrarlen

After the upgrade to Lion, it seems Apple has locked down more of the file system or moved things. I can't locate the Lion Install package now. Even manually it's been challenging. Does anyone know where it lives? Thanks!

July 20 2011 at 6:19 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

AmTechFox

Is this still valid for tomorrows release? I'd like to know TUAW.

Thanks.

July 19 2011 at 9:39 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

nicleT

All my OS X installers are on different partitions of two FW HD (one for PPC and on for Intel Mac). Lion installer will join the other cats!

July 18 2011 at 11:09 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

LOLuMaaad

If Snow Leopard is a requirement for Lion, can you still do a clean install of Lion without Snow Leopard? Or will it prompt you to insert Snow Leopard DVD or what? I'm new to Mac upgrades but I would prefer a clean install whenever possible.

June 11 2011 at 10:00 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

nickganga

Every version of Lion has been like this. You can also use Disk Utility to push it out to a USB stick a la: http://nickganga.com/2007/10/26/installing-leopard-without-dvd/

June 08 2011 at 3:53 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Justin Carlson

Interesting note. Snow Leopard has been able to do what the article talks about for a while now. Lion, however, does one better by allowing you to INSTALL Lion to an external USB drive and boot from it to run the FULL OS. This is the same thing linux has been able to do for ages (I know, I know... linux users...) using Live CDs. Just imagine being able to carry around a flash drive with Lion installed, ready to boot from any computer with your own data. Pretty awesome. I'm currently doing it.

And I am aware Firewire drive could do this for a few OS versions now. That is becoming a moot point, because Firewire is dying. Let's just face it. Thunderbolt and USB ftw!

June 07 2011 at 10:01 PM Report abuse Permalink -1 rate up rate down Reply

1 reply to Justin Carlson's comment

MySchizoBuddy

So since target disk mode in OS X that allows to install the FULL OS on to an external harddrive has been available just as long as Linux has them. But that's a moot point cause target disk mode works with Firewire drives and not USB drives.

What lame argument are you going to come up next?

June 08 2011 at 4:27 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Bryce Shearer

Has anyone found the dmg online so we can try to install it now. I found the iOS 5 ipsw but not this lion dmg.

June 07 2011 at 6:59 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

1 reply to Bryce Shearer's comment

Craig

It's right there in the download section on developer.apple.com

June 08 2011 at 8:28 PM Report abuse Permalink +1 rate up rate down Reply

jordandanny91

I have the Snow Leopard install disk loaded in a partition on the LaCie Rugged portable external drive where I keep a redundant Time Machine backup. Can you tell me how to load the Lion install 'disk' in that Rugged partition (in place of Snow Leopard)?

June 07 2011 at 4:07 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

1 reply to jordandanny91's comment

Mr Lizard

Good news: you'll just need to do exactly what you did to create the Snow Leopard partition. Instead of copying from the CD, you'll just copy from the Lion disk image.

June 07 2011 at 6:02 PM Report abuse Permalink +1 rate up rate down Reply

1 reply to Mr Lizard's comment