need advice/help: Clean install / new SSD /Ram

[justboughtamac]

2009 Macbook Pro 13" 2.26ghz/160/2x1gb MB990

This is my first apple laptop and I am buying it used from a friend.
I know that it originally came with snow leopard and then was upgraded to mountain lion. Once I purchase this laptop I want to upgrade to a SSD & 8gb of ram and I want to do a clean install of lion. What is the best way to do this?

can i just create a mountain lion usb start up flash drive then power down laptop and then replace Harddrive & Ram and boot up with usb and install?

or Do i have to do anything prior like erase his files or junk on the computer?

Once again this is my first macbook pro and I am also not the most computer savy person in the world any advice would be helpful, thanks

 

[mabaty]

Do exactly as you say. Make bootable USB with OS X on it, test it, replace hardware, use usb to reinstall OS X.

 

[justboughtamac]

ok, nice so i dont have to worry about anything being on his laptop(he did not erase/format anything)

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Do exactly as you say. Make bootable USB with OS X on it, test it, replace hardware, use usb to reinstall OS X.

This might be a stupid question but how do i test the bootable USB.
(sry but this is my first macbook and i dont have it yet and am just getting prepared)

 

[mabaty]

After you make the usb drive reboot your machine and hold down the 'option' key after the Apple dong. Then, a list of volumes should come up, one should be an orange usb volume icon, which is your bootable volume. Select it and make sure it brings up the OS X installer/utilities.

 

[Poisonivy326]

I'm trying to find the OSX installer in my MBP -- where is it?

 

[Weaselboy]

I'm trying to find the OSX installer in my MBP -- where is it?

If you download the installer from the App Store, it is saved in the /Applications folder. But once you run the installer it deletes itself. So if you need it to make yourself a USB key installer you will need to download it again.