Installing a SSD and Fresh Mountain Lion install?

[Diligo123]

Hi
From what i've read at various places, in order to replace my HD with a SSD, I need to create a bootable USB stick which can install mountain lion. Just a quick question - will this bootable drive work straight off a blank hard drive without Snow Leopard/Lion or any other OS installed? Or do I need to go about it another way? I was under the impression that I could not simply install the completely blank SSD, plug in/boot from the USB and install mountain lion outright.

Thankyou

 

[Zedsdead185]

I did exactly what you described yesterday after my new crucial v4 256gb drive arrived through the post. As long as you make the lion usb drive correctly it should work

What you're probably getting confused with is that mountain lion creates a recovery partition on your storage drive as a replacement to using a DVD/CD if you need to boot for any recovery action such as a reinstall or time machine restore. Obviously without that recovery partition you can't boot from it to install mountain lion. However, the usb stick with the bootable mountain lion installer on it means you don't need the recovery partition as you have all the information you need on the memory stick.

 

[Diligo123]

I'm really glad you said that; it's reassured me that you used the Crucial M4 as that's what i've ordered

So basically, I need to:

Format the SSD using Disk Utility
Create a bootable USB drive of Mountain Lion
Replace the HDD with the blank/formatted SSD
Boot off the USB stick and install (fresh) Mountain Lion

Thankyou for the reply

 

[Zedsdead185]

So basically, I need to:

Format the SSD using Disk Utility
Create a bootable USB drive of Mountain Lion
Replace the HDD with the blank/formatted SSD
Boot off the USB stick and install (fresh) Mountain Lion

Yeah, thats no problem. However, you won't need to format the ssd before you install it in the machine. If you replace the HD with the SSD and then boot from the usb stick, the Mountain Lion installer comes with Disk Utility on it so you can do it then if you want. Thats what I did anyway.

 

[Obsidian6]

Here's what I did (I too bought a Crucial M4 256GB)

I happen to have an external drive dock for 2.5/3.5" drives so I plugged my new SSD into that first while my computer was running. I initialized the SSD as prompted by the OS and then rebooted to the "Recovery HD" partition. I then selected the Reinstall Mountain Lion option and selected the SSD.

After the install was complete I instructed migration assistant to copy over my user account.

Then I did the swap after the drive was completed. I did buy the drive bay adapter from OWC so I can use my previous HDD as a secondary storage drive and I put the superdrive into an enclosure.

 

[Diligo123]

However, you won't need to format the ssd before you install it in the machine. If you replace the HD with the SSD and then boot from the usb stick, the Mountain Lion installer comes with Disk Utility on it so you can do it then if you want.

Cheers, should save a little bit of time Bootable USB drive sorted now, just need to install the SSD so fingers crossed will go smoothly.

 

[yusukeaoki]

Or plug the SSD into a external enclosure and go through ML Recovery mode to install OS from there which I believe is easier.