Newly In Stock: SEE ALL...
Sony Mirrorless wish list • Deals on Sony
$2997 Nikon Z7 II Mirrorless Camera OUT OF STOCK in Cameras: Mirrorless	$2297 Nikon D780 DSLR OUT OF STOCK in Cameras: DSLR	$2997 Nikon D850 DSLR OUT OF STOCK in Cameras: DSLR	$610 SAVE $110 = 15.0% ZEISS 32mm f/1.8 Touit Lens for FUJIFILM X OUT OF STOCK in Lenses: Mirrorless	$497 Pentax 70mm f/2.4 HD Pentax DA Limited IN STOCK in Lenses: DSLR

Protocol for Upgrading to Mac OS X Lion

2011-07-21 • SEND FEEDBACK |

Related: Apple, Apple macOS, How-To

Although the vast majority of upgrades go just fine, backups need to be keep anyway, so why not protect yourself by doing it right?

Clone the boot volume to an external drive. Make a 2nd clone as a backup.
Boot the Mac from the external clone.
Install Lion onto the external clone.
Reboot, then clone back over the internal volume.

See also How to Upgrade Your System/Boot Drive.

Installing on more than one Mac

Once the installer is run, it deletes the installer app.

Download once, then before installing, copy the “Install OS X Lion.app” from your Applications folder to another drive. That copy can then be used as often as needed for your other Macs.

Reader reports

Installing Mac OS X Lion on a system with a software striped RAID boot drive is reported to destroy the boot volume, rendering it unusable. I have two (2) credible reports of this problem.

I have four other reports that installation on a software RAID boot volume has worked without difficult, so perhaps there is a risk factor that will eventually emerge.