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OS X Lion Upgrade vs Clean Install over Snow Leopard

Heston said:
I did a clean install of Lion GM without installing SL first. Wiped my HDD.

For DP4, I "upgraded" over SL

Both methods worked without a hitch.
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Is that possible (directly install lion without sl)?
I think the only way to do a clean install was installing sl and then upgrade to lion. Am I right?
 
uvitor said:
Is that possible (directly install lion without sl)?
I think the only way to do a clean install was installing sl and then upgrade to lion. Am I right?
Click to expand...

yes perfectly possible

it is detailed on this site in many places, also google will find a raft of simple instructions all you need is a 8 gig usb stick QED
 
a few days ago i did an upgrade install of lion but i found out hat my laptop was running much hotter than it did under SL, so last night i did a clean install of lion.

it was really easy to perform, you dont even need the disk. just boot into the recovery partition, use disk utility to format the hd, then click reinstall lion on the 5 menu option and it'll go to work redownloading it (assuming you have active internet connection).

i'm pretty careful with my stuff but i have to say that clean installing it is the way to go. its tedious and time consuming but allows you to start with a clean slate. you can pull all your data by plugging in your old TM backup and manually diving into the files to drag/drop that way (used that to recover music/docs/photos). everything else i just did on my own.

before clean install my lion was running ~65˚C, now after its about 50-55˚C. pretty big difference and i bet my battery life has improved too.
 
I always do a clean install when upgrading to a major OS release. Always seems to work best when running a fresh copy instead of the various bits of leftover that an upgrade seems to leave behind on your system. Clean install then bring the user profile and applications over using the Migration Assistant.
 
Clean Install is the way to go

I currently have snow leopard but will opt for a clean install due to osx's failure to completely remove files when you uninstall an app. I think this is an issue that seriously needs to be addressed in Lion through launchpad.
 
The installer freaked me out since it doesn't mention 'upgrade' anywhere (I installed from a disk image over SL), but I satisfied myself it was indeed doing an upgrade by looking at the installer log as it was working.
 
I know that I can install Lion on a separate partition from Snow Leopard. But, is there a way to migrate all my settings, files and apps from the Snow Leopard partition to the new Lion partition, assuming I'd like to delete the Snow Leopard partition later? If necessary, I can clone the Snow Leopard partition to an external drive to facilitate the migration. Thanks in advance.
 
i install lion from a clean install before i install it via snow leopard and has 100 mb of other in the hd that why i install via clean and install perfect
 
Prev question unanswered

Someone asked earlier when the final version is released, will we just be able to install that over GM? I hoping that installing the final will help correct all the wifi issues that I am having with the gm. It has rendered my mbp 2011 basically unusable in the sense that I can't connect to Internet or my home network, or do time m aching backups to my NAS. Otherwise, I'll be reinstalling SLP and. Reinstalling all my apps, parallels, etc :(
 
Install from Leopard

My wife and I are both running Snow Leopard on our Macbook Pros and plan to do the AppStore upgrade to Lion when that becomes available. My daughter runs Leopard on her Macbook. I know that I can (and plan to) create an upgrade disk from the installer when I get Lion and upgrade my wife's machine from that disk. Would there be some mechanism where my daughter could PAY for the Lion upgrade, and then use my disk to upgrade her computer? I simply think it's slightly unfair for her to have to pay for SL simply to access the App Store.
 
When you speak of "clean installing Lion", are you talking about an Apple supported method?

I'd prefer to clean install Lion, but I can't imagine the installer from the App Store giving me the option to do so. It will probably just go ahead and do an upgrade install over SL. How do I make sure I do a clean install of Lion?
 
gmaniax said:
Someone asked earlier when the final version is released, will we just be able to install that over GM? I hoping that installing the final will help correct all the wifi issues that I am having with the gm. It has rendered my mbp 2011 basically unusable in the sense that I can't connect to Internet or my home network, or do time m aching backups to my NAS. Otherwise, I'll be reinstalling SLP and. Reinstalling all my apps, parallels, etc :(
Click to expand...

The final is the GM. You'll be able to update to 10.7.1 when it's released. In the past the first update has arrived pretty fast.


jekyl said:
My wife and I are both running Snow Leopard on our Macbook Pros and plan to do the AppStore upgrade to Lion when that becomes available. My daughter runs Leopard on her Macbook. I know that I can (and plan to) create an upgrade disk from the installer when I get Lion and upgrade my wife's machine from that disk. Would there be some mechanism where my daughter could PAY for the Lion upgrade, and then use my disk to upgrade her computer? I simply think it's slightly unfair for her to have to pay for SL simply to access the App Store.
Click to expand...

Your daughter can either log into the App Store on your SL machine with her Apple ID and buy it, or buy it after she uses your upgrade disk. The first method is probably best as the App Store might tell her it's already installed and not let her buy it.
 
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baryon said:
I switched from Windows because I hated that you install your OS, lose all your data, and a year later you can start over again... It's never over. Hopefully (and apparently) OS X doesn't require this.
Click to expand...

Did that for years. Finally got smart and would clone my HDD after a clean install and major program installation. Then just restore that clone and was 90% good to go. All data is kept external.
 
Cougarcat said:
The final is the GM. You'll be able to update to 10.7.1 when it's released. In the past the first update has arrived pretty fast.




Your daughter can either log into the App Store on your SL machine with her Apple ID and buy it, or buy it after she uses your upgrade disk. The first method is probably best as the App Store might tell her it's already installed and not let her buy it.
Click to expand...

I didn't think of that, and it's an excellent idea. Thank you.
 
Not great. Why have 2gb when it's cheap as 'chips?' Esp if you have 2gb and you run a fee iMovie projects, parallels, etc. Not to mention lions resume eats ram.

I'm selling some ram. Check my last started thread. Ahem people of the UK ;)
 
xgman said:
These days you need a min of 4gb to even run the OS properly. I wouldn't go any lower than 8. Memory is cheap relatively speaking.
Click to expand...

Many machines will not support more the 3.3GB (Pre SR chipsets). All three of my machines are from the same era and have this limitation. Two have 2GB the other has 3.3GB. That said, in my limited testing, I don't see a significant difference between the performance of SL and Lion on any of my machines. YMMV.

FTR - I have been putting off buying a new machine for the last year or so since Apple isn't showing much commitment to the OS X platform. I don't know if Lion has changed my mind. It's a bit underwhelming. The $30 price tag is just barely justified.
 
err404 said:
FTR - I have been putting off buying a new machine for the last year or so since Apple isn't showing much commitment to the OS X platform. I don't know if Lion has changed my mind. It's a bit underwhelming. The $30 price tag is just barely justified.
Click to expand...

lol
 
err404 said:
Many machines will not support more the 3.3GB (Pre SR chipsets). All three of my machines are from the same era and have this limitation. Two have 2GB the other has 3.3GB. That said, in my limited testing, I don't see a significant difference between the performance of SL and Lion on any of my machines. YMMV.
Click to expand...

I have recently bought a MacBook Pro early 2011 and I find that the difference in performance between SL and Lion is huge, Lion runs fast, cool, silent, all the opposite of SL. I suppose Lion has been optimized for recent machines.
Back to the topic of this thread, I strongly disagree with the upgrade policy suggested by Apple. I had a few days of hell because of that. The upgrade damaged my filesystem and there was no way I could repair it, not even with DiskWarrior. I strongly suggest a clean install to everybody.
 
Reformat ,10.6 clean install

I have experienced many problems since installing Lion on various Macs in a variety of ways clean and upgrade and MacBook 10.4 then partition then clean 10.6 then a clean lion worked great however on 2010 MacBook pro 10.6.3 clean Lion instal on clean partition froze when I was writing this reply now I am writing from Padi ,you see everyone has a different set up and so different problems.

Try this: save your data and do a 7 times erase and partition 3 volumes repair with disk utility, apple hardware test ,(by the way Japan Apple service told me apple care Techtool deluxe is discontinued and they recommend disk war) just a complete test and clean factory Mac then install 10.6 until reboot then update and buy Lion upgrade or clean.

Things will take time the first package will be a test case for us all until patches appear:)
 
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