Want to upgrade to Lion and reformat hard drive

[cmF]

Hey there,

I'm someone who painstakingly spends about 10 hours backing up and reformatting their computer every 8-12 months to ensure optimal performance. It's worth it for me, but I'm curious as to how I can make it a bit easier for myself. Right now I'm working on a 2009 Macbook Pro Unibody with an upgrade to Snow Leopard. I need to reformat soon and I also want to upgrade to Lion.

However, I DO NOT want to reformat my computer with default Leopard software, then install Snow Leopard upgrade, then download and install Lion.

It seems kinds of stupid to install Snow Leopard just so I can install Lion. Thus, I'm hoping to skip that intermediate step. Is there's a way that I can use my current Snow Leopard macbook to wipe out my hard drive and install Lion without reverting back to Leopard first?

Thanks for your help!

 

[Cmd-the-World]

You can install Lion directly without the need of Leopard and Snow Leopard.

Macworld has a good article of how to create a bootable installation disk

http://www.macworld.com/article/161069/2011/07/make_a_bootable_lion_installer.html

There is another way to do it by buying the Lion USB stick.

 

[cmF]

Anyone else? I'd prefer not to make a boot disk if I don't have to.

 

[Cmd-the-World]

The other option is install Lion on your current Snow Leopard installation. Reboot into the Lion recovery partition format the drive and reinstall Lion. However this method takes longer as you need to download the 4GB Lion installer twice.

 

[macrem]

The other variation which worked well for me was to perform a fresh install of Lion from an SD card:

http://osxdaily.com/2011/07/08/make-a-bootable-mac-os-x-10-7-lion-installer-from-a-usb-flash-drive/

 

[Heebeejeebies]

You can buy a Lion USB stick from Apple and boot from it (Hold down 'option' as your Mac boots).

 

[Cmd-the-World]

Macworld has a good article of how to create a bootable installation disk

http://www.macworld.com/article/161069/2011/07/make_a_bootable_lion_installer.html

By disk I was referring to USB sticks, external hard drives, SD cards, optical disks... If you follow the link you are able to use any one of your preferred storage device.

macrem as well posted a good link on how to do it on a USB.

 

[robgendreau]

If you really want to make it easy for yourself then just buy Lion, copy the installer so you'll be able to keep it, and install per the usual Apple method without reformatting.

If you run into massive problems you cannot fix any other way, then try reformatting and installing from Lion installed on an external device.

I really don't see the need for routine reformats of your drive, and I'd like to hear how procedure that "ensures optimal performance."