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HRodMusic

macrumors regular
Original poster
Aug 28, 2011
104
47
Seattle WA
ok so i have a 2011mbp, and i just recently upgraded to lion, i was wondering if i were to buy an ssd, do i have to buy lion again?
 
ok so i have a 2011mbp, and i just recently upgraded to lion, i was wondering if i were to buy an ssd, do i have to buy lion again?

No. There are a number of options. You could use the network recovery or you could put your old drive in an enclosure and image it across with disk utility or carbon copy cloner.
 
oh what do u recommend doing? i really want to do a fresh install of lion on it, is it possible? i plan on saving all my personal data on a external hdd.
 
No. There are a number of options. You could use the network recovery or you could put your old drive in an enclosure and image it across with disk utility or carbon copy cloner.

This would work, but a clone of the old drive will not give him a recovery partition.

oh what do u recommend doing? i really want to do a fresh install of lion on it, is it possible? i plan on saving all my personal data on a external hdd.

It sounds like you bought Lion from the app store? Go back to the app store and option click the "install" button to redownload Lion, the follow one of the online guides to put Lion on a USB key. Now install your new SSD then boot from the USB key and use it to install Lion on the SSD. Then use Migration Assist to move you data from the old drive (in an external enclosure) to the new SSD.
 
If you bought Lion from the App Store, you can re-download it and then use Lion Disk Maker to create a bootable drive. This allows you to do a clean install.

I did this on my MBP Early 2011 using a 8GB SD card (8GB as I put XCode on there as well - I think a 4GB drive will be OK for just Lion).
 
It sounds like you bought Lion from the app store? Go back to the app store and option click the "install" button to redownload Lion, the follow one of the online guides to put Lion on a USB key. Now install your new SSD then boot from the USB key and use it to install Lion on the SSD. Then use Migration Assist to move you data from the old drive (in an external enclosure) to the new SSD.

I've seen this mentioned on a few forums, I bought Lion from the mac app store on release for an imac with SL installed, i've since moved to a macbook pro which came with lion pre installed, lion shows up in the store as 'installed' if I click it nothing happens, no new download or anything, is this because it was pre-installed in this particular macbook? I burnt a lion disk which I used to restore the iMac before giving it to my dad but i'd like to create a usb flash drive installer as it takes an age to boot from DVD to re-install or restore from TM. Can I do this from the disk?
 
You can still redownload from the App Store if you have Lion installed. I think you need to hold down Alt when you click download.
 
I just installed a new SSD on my early 2011 Macbook Pro that wasn't preloaded with Lion and I had to reinstall SL and then download Lion from the app store.

I tried to use the USB recovery disk and do a clean install that way, but when the installer tried to verify that I had purchased/had Lion before, it got stuck on that screen and would never do anything.

I'm thinking you have to have had Lion pre-loaded for it to work for a clean install maybe. All I know is it didn't work for me with a GUID formatted USB recovery disk.
 
You can still redownload from the App Store if you have Lion installed. I think you need to hold down Alt when you click download.

I'm sorry I was not more clear in my post. Start the App Store app, then while holding down the option key click the Purchases tab at the top. That will take you to a page of purchased apps and Lion will now have an "Install" button. Just click Install to redownload.

20110830-te3x1h57mqdx6kkpcr1mm77gj9.jpg
 
I'm sorry I was not more clear in my post. Start the App Store app, then while holding down the option key click the Purchases tab at the top. That will take you to a page of purchased apps and Lion will now have an "Install" button. Just click Install to redownload.

Image

Thanks, worked fine this way!
 
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