Selling Mac Pro, OS Lion Question (Thumb Drive Disappeared from Store!)

[bunts]

I have a bit of a dilemma.

I'm selling my Mac Pro and always intended on buying the Lion Thumb drive to clean install Mac OS Lion (Mountain not compatible with my Mac Pro) but that's suddenly disappeared from the Apple Store website!

I take it the only way to sell a Mac without a OS that's linked to your Apple ID was to buy one of these drives but now I don't have that option and I'm stuck.

I could make a USB drive from my Lion installation but wouldn't this be linked to my Apple ID.

Any suggestions?

 

[bunts]

It will not be linked to your Apple ID.

That's good news. I was always under the impression the downloading Lion linked it to your Apple ID. And even if i was to fresh install from a USB drive I made from my Lion install it would be linked to my ID.

This not the case then?

 

[netslacker]

I do not believe that is accurate.

I recently went through the process of having to create a lion usb from my installation to re-install it. Since the USB doesn't include the entire OS it asked me to enter my appleID and password, then it downloaded Lion and installed it (this is after I booted from the USB). The USB just boots your computer and then still pulls the install files from Apple, but it appears to verify ownership prior to downloading.

That was my experience with creating my own USB from a Lion install. Perhaps there's a different method but this is how I recall it working.

 

[Mal]

I do not believe that is accurate.

I recently went through the process of having to create a lion usb from my installation to re-install it. Since the USB doesn't include the entire OS it asked me to enter my appleID and password, then it downloaded Lion and installed it (this is after I booted from the USB). The USB just boots your computer and then still pulls the install files from Apple, but it appears to verify ownership prior to downloading.

That was my experience with creating my own USB from a Lion install. Perhaps there's a different method but this is how I recall it working.

You created a Recovery Disk on a USB flash drive. This is entirely different from creating an actual Lion Install Drive. It doesn't need to verify anything if the entire OS is already on the drive, which requires a different process (and of course a large enough flash drive).

jW