I've read that you can do a clean install via a thumb drive. Does it matter? Is the clean install better?
I've read that you can do a clean install via a thumb drive. Does it matter? Is the clean install better?
Do a clean install. You don't need any drive. All you need is your Mac, your iTunes ID you bought Lion with, and an internet connection.
How do you do a clean install without a DVD or USB Drive as you have to boot into the image? Please explain
Recovery.
Restart your Mac... Hold down command+R to boot into recovery, then you will have the option to do a clean install of Lion, via internet and your iTunes ID. You will also have access to disk utility and all the other goodies you would as if you had a disc.
I went through a lot of trouble trying to do it this way. In the recovery partition, whenever I tried to reinstall Lion it would take at 6-8 hours for the progress bar to advance 25% (although it constantly displayed a little over 5 hours remaining), and when it got there it would display the message, "Can't download the additional components needed to install Mac OS X."
I did this because the guys at AppleCare told me to. I tried it four times with the same results. One time I reinstalled Snow Leopard and downloaded a fresh copy of Lion, but still got the same message. Since all the installing and downloading was so slow, I my computer was held up for over two days.
I finally used my dad's flash drive and booted from that, and I was running a clean copy of lion in under three hours.
Despite my warning, I would be very interested to hear if the same error is common when you try to reinstall Lion via the recovery partition after erasing the main part of the disk.