Is it Possible to re-download Lion to a different Drive?

[dannymac1]

My Macbook's drive is failing as I type. Bad sectors are popping up everywhere. I re-downloaded Lion from the app store to make a bootable usb but when I tried moving the file, it gave me a "Error 36 can't read or write" error. The 3.75gb file landed on some bad sectors. Carbon copy was giving me the same errors. bad sectors, etc.

So, is it Possible to re-download Lion to a different Drive?

Thanks,

 

[Porco]

Yes, if you downloaded to upgrade from Snow Leopard in the first place it should be fairly simple. I strongly think your priority at this point should be making sure you have back ups of any of your personal files.

Assuming you buy a new hard disk, you should be able to use the install discs that came with your MacBook, get 10.6 updated to the point you have the Mac App Store and then you can re-download Lion by logging in to your account on there.

Given that you can do exactly this on any macs you own, of course you can re-download Lion. You could also make a USB stick installer from that one for any future use if you wanted.

Hope it goes well, disk failures are annoying!

Once you've replaced the disk you might want to consider buying a USB enclosure for the old drive and running disk utility (or other software) on it to try to fix it up for non-critical use. It might be better to recover any non-backed up files that way too, as the OS won't be writing to the disk like it does with a boot drive.

 

[dannymac1]

Yes, if you downloaded to upgrade from Snow Leopard in the first place it should be fairly simple. I strongly think your priority at this point should be making sure you have back ups of any of your personal files.

Assuming you buy a new hard disk, you should be able to use the install discs that came with your MacBook, get 10.6 updated to the point you have the Mac App Store and then you can re-download Lion by logging in to your account on there.

Given that you can do exactly this on any macs you own, of course you can re-download Lion. You could also make a USB stick installer from that one for any future use if you wanted.

Hope it goes well, disk failures are annoying!

Once you've replaced the disk you might want to consider buying a USB enclosure for the old drive and running disk utility (or other software) on it to try to fix it up for non-critical use. It might be better to recover any non-backed up files that way too, as the OS won't be writing to the disk like it does with a boot drive.

Hey thanks for the info. I might not have been clearon my intentions. I want to re download lion to a secondary disk. I don't think there is an option for that. The app store automatically sets the target to your Applications folder. I want to direct it to another drive.

 

[iThinkergoiMac]

Download it and then move it to the drive of your choice...

EDIT: Ack, maybe I should try reading the entirety of the first post before responding. My bad. Do you have another Mac, or a friend's Mac you can download it on?

 

[dannymac1]

Download it and then move it to the drive of your choice...

EDIT: Ack, maybe I should try reading the entirety of the first post before responding. My bad. Do you have another Mac, or a friend's Mac you can download it on?

Nope, or at least not one readily available. Oh we'll I've decided to just install leopard on the new drive, then go from there.

Thanks though.

 

[Quad5Ny]

Use This Tool to try and copy your recovery partition to a thumb drive.

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If that doesn't work, drop by your local Apple Store. From what I heard in certain circumstances (like yours) they give out small 1GB Thumb Drives that contain the Lion recovery partition. You can boot off of that and use internet recovery.

(Or they can probably just lend you a full installer thumb drive and let you install it in the store).

.​

 

[Taz Mangus]

There is one option that might work. You will have to create a symolic link on your boot drive application folder that points to a folder on your new hd drive. You will need to have super user permission by using the "su" command.

1. Open the terminal app.
2. Create an Applications folder on your new HD.
3. In terminal, cd /
4. In terminal, su cp -r Applications/* <new HD>/Applications
5. In terminal, su mv Applications Applications.sav
6. In terminal, su ln -s <new HD>/Applications Applications

Once you loaded Lion on your new HD you will need to create another boot disk from that.

 

[dijonemon]

^ This answer is what I woud suggest doing