Is There an Easier Way?

[MisterSensitive]

Trying to replace slow stock HD in my new MBP with a Crucial M4 I just got. I don't have an enclosure for making the M4 an external. Lion doesn't seem to have a way to reinstall from scratch (none that I can find).

I do have a Data Doubler kit from OWC that I'm going to use for the final Frankensteining of this glorious box.

I figure I can temporarily install the M4 in the optical space, using the Data Doubler, copy over the contents of the old drive, using Carbon Copy, then swap drives.

That sounds like kind of a pain, but is that the easiest way or am I missing something?

 

[Mr MM]

you can do a time machine backup, put the SSD in place, install lion from the recovery (it will download lion), and there you go

 

[twennywonn]

Easy peasy

Trying to replace slow stock HD in my new MBP with a Crucial M4 I just got. I don't have an enclosure for making the M4 an external. Lion doesn't seem to have a way to reinstall from scratch (none that I can find).

I do have a Data Doubler kit from OWC that I'm going to use for the final Frankensteining of this glorious box.

I figure I can temporarily install the M4 in the optical space, using the Data Doubler, copy over the contents of the old drive, using Carbon Copy, then swap drives.

That sounds like kind of a pain, but is that the easiest way or am I missing something?

From apple.com

If your Mac problem is a little less common — your hard drive has failed or you’ve installed a hard drive without OS X, for example — Internet Recovery takes over automatically. It downloads and starts OS X Recovery directly from Apple servers over a broadband Internet connection. And your Mac has access to the same OS X Recovery features online. Internet Recovery is built into every newly-released Mac starting with the Mac mini and MacBook Air.

The how to:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4718

 

[CosmoPilot]

Use lion recovery assistant. Much faster than the internal internet recovery.

 

[MisterSensitive]

So the firmware has the smarts to allow reinstall from the web onto a virgin SSD?

If so, that's pretty cool.