Hardware 2.0

Adrian Kingsley-Hughes

Burning a bootable DVD copy of Mac OS X 10.7 'Lion'

By Adrian Kingsley-Hughes | July 20, 2011, 8:19am PDT

So, you just downloaded nearly 4GB of Mac OS X 10.7 ‘Lion’ install files from the Mac App store and are wondering if you can get this onto a DVD?

You can - and it’s qute easy!

NOTE: Do this AFTER downloading Lion and BEFORE installation as the download may be deleted following install!

Open Finder and navigate to /Applications/Install Mac OS X Lion
Right-click on the package and choose Show Package Contents
Open the Contents folder
Open SharedSupport and find InstallESD.dmg
Right-click on InstallESD.dmg and paste (right-click and choose Paste Item) it to a convenient location (such as the Desktop)
Fire up Disk Utility (/Applications/Utilities)
Click Burn, select InstallESD.dmg from your convenient location and click Burn
Find a recordable DVD disc and pop it in the optical drive (yes, you need an optical drive to do this) and click Burn
Wait … wait … wait …
Job done!

Not only does this give you a backup of the download (so you won’t have to download it again), but it also gives you a handy way to install Lion onto another Mac you own. (Legally Apple allows you five installs to machines with the same Apple ID.)

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Topics

Apple Macintosh, Bootable DVD, Lion, DVD, Apple Mac OS X, Apple Mac OS, Desktops, Operating Systems, Software, Hardware, Adrian Kingsley-Hughes

Adrian Kingsley-Hughes is an internationally published technology author who has devoted over a decade to helping users get the most from technology.

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RE: Burning a bootable DVD copy of Mac OS X 10.7 'Lion'

carmelivan 6th Dec

@carmelivan

Is there anything to do to about the disappearing installer? surely the solution cannot be to purchase another LION!?!?

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RE: Burning a bootable DVD copy of Mac OS X 10.7 'Lion'

LoverockDavidson 20th Jul

4GB??? OMG that is so bloated!!

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Contributr

RE: Burning a bootable DVD copy of Mac OS X 10.7 'Lion'

Adrian Kingsley-Hughes 20th Jul

@LoverockDavidson LOL!

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RE: Burning a bootable DVD copy of Mac OS X 10.7 'Lion'

morrig 20th Jul

LoverockDavidson- Yep,stuffed to the core till the pips squick !

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RE: Burning a bootable DVD copy of Mac OS X 10.7 'Lion'

peterdcox 20th Jul

But am I the first person to discover that running Leopard does not mean you can run Lion? My Duo core MacBook, and two iMacs for the bin? What's that about Apple?

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RE: Burning a bootable DVD copy of Mac OS X 10.7 'Lion'

msalzberg 20th Jul

@peterdcox

No, but you may be the last person to discover that. It specifically requires a Core2Duo or better. This is not news.

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This is fairly standard in the industry

toddybottom 20th Jul

@peterdcox
Companies all choose their own timelines for supporting older equipment. While Apple tends to stop supporting their hardware and software sooner than most others, nothing is forcing you to upgrade. Will your hardware suddenly stop working just because Lion came out?

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RE: Burning a bootable DVD copy of Mac OS X 10.7 'Lion'

bluebeard66 21st Jul

@peterdcox
I keep reading the sniping comments on ZDNet between the mac / anti-mac users, regarding the technical abilities of mac users. This page seems to settle the dispute: amazingly (imo), there's an article dedicated to explaining how to burn a DVD (don't remember seeing one for Windows or Linux users - though I could be mistaken). I guess you can be forgiven for not understanding, peterdcox.

Never mind...shiny thing make it all better again as soon as you pay.

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RE: Burning a bootable DVD copy of Mac OS X 10.7 'Lion'

ssaha 21st Jul

@bluebeard66 Since you only seem to read headlines before writing your drivel, you apparently lost the point of the point of the article, which gave instructions on how to extract the disk image of the OS installer from the App store package download. Actually burning to DVD (or better yet, making a bootable Flash drive) was not discussed, because Adrian assumed that those of us reading would know how. Since I have several Macs in house (and am planning to test out Lion for my school's computers), I appreciate not having to download 4GB for each and every computer I own or manage.

But don't let facts obscure your little childish rant.

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RE: Burning a bootable DVD copy of Mac OS X 10.7 'Lion'

jatbains 20th Jul

Great when can I install it on my PC?

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Right now, if your PC is a Mac

HollywoodDog 20th Jul

@jatbains Macs are PC's. You can get your dual boot going: OSX 10.7 and Win7

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You can't (legally)

toddybottom 20th Jul

@jatbains
Just like my cable provider gives me digital TV at a greatly reduced rate if I also purchase my telephone and Internet services through them, Apple gives you a huge discount on OS X as long as you bundle it with a Mac. If you want to purchase OS X at the regular, unsubsidized rate, you would have to buy Apple for how ever many hundreds of billions of dollars it is currently worth.

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RE: Burning a bootable DVD copy of Mac OS X 10.7 'Lion'

non-biased 25th Jul

@toddybottom Once again, no clue what you are talking about. You can walk into Best Buy and purchase a full version copy of Snow Leopard today for $29. Lion isn't available but may become available. Even if it doesn't you purchase SL for $29.99 and the Lion upgrade for $29 and you have $$59.99 invested. How much does a copy of Win 7 cost, oh that's right it starts at $199.99.

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Read the license on your copy of SL and Lion

toddybottom 25th Jul

You are not legally allowed to install it on anything other than a Mac. That is what I wrote. OS X is a bundle deal with a Mac. If you want to buy a copy of OS X that you can legally install on anything other than a Mac, you would have to buy Apple for hundreds of billions of dollars. That is the unbundled cost of OS X.

That $199 that you pay for Windows 7 is the standalone price allowing you to install the OS on any hardware, even Apple's. The bundled price of Windows is closer to $30.

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RE: Burning a bootable DVD copy of Mac OS X 10.7 'Lion'

Michael.Lunney@... 20th Jul

@jatbains

Apple is a hardware company . . . they don't sell standalone software. That's been the corner stone to both their successes and failures since day one. The design software around "known" hardware to ensure the best user experience possible. Their original OS was on a set of ROM chips.

Microsoft didn't want to be in the hardware business (until XBox) opting instead to be the OS(es) loaded on as many systems as possible. That makes coding and consistency across platforms a challenge. The number of "unknowns" in the Windows world is truly mind-boggling. It's actually a testament to their commitment, skill, and resources that their user experience is as good as it is. I remember noting how quickly hey ditch the DEC Alpha processor the moment Compaq bought and agreed to the idea. That alone must have been cause for great celebration in Redmond, back in the day.

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RE: Burning a bootable DVD copy of Mac OS X 10.7 'Lion'

non-biased 25th Jul

@Michael.Lunney@... Apple is a hardware company . . . they don't sell standalone software.
Really, then why can you walk into Best Buy and purchase a copy of Snow Leopard?

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RE: Burning a bootable DVD copy of Mac OS X 10.7 'Lion'

matt@... 20th Jul

So I already did all of this. So if the image is not tied to the Mac App Store how does apple keep people from just using others Bootable DVD Lion disk?

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RE: Burning a bootable DVD copy of Mac OS X 10.7 'Lion'

Zippereye125 20th Jul

@matt@...
They are a hardware company - they make it only run on newer hardware so you need to have recently purchased/or go out and get a 1200.00 or so Mac to run the 30.00 OS you were clever enough to rip off.

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RE: Burning a bootable DVD copy of Mac OS X 10.7 'Lion'

non-biased 25th Jul

@Zippereye125 Recent as in how long? Lion will run on systems over two years old so what is your point. Didn't Vista have issues running on systems that were a year or so old when it first came out?

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RE: Burning a bootable DVD copy of Mac OS X 10.7 'Lion'

msdamico@... 20th Jul

My MacBook doesn't have a DVD burner. Any hints as to how to get it burned from a Windows computer?

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RE: Burning a bootable DVD copy of Mac OS X 10.7 'Lion'

jgm@... 20th Jul

@msdamico@... Well, first you need to reflect on the wisdom of your initial purchase. happy

Once you've done that penance, you can either copy it to a PC and use burning software to burn it, or create an ISO image on your Mac first then copy that to a PC with a burner and burn the image. ImgBurn, InfraRecorder, and CDBurnerXP are all free burning programs you can use if the Windows computer doesn't have one.

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RE: Burning a bootable DVD copy of Mac OS X 10.7 'Lion'

derekgore 20th Jul

@msdamico@...
Actually you can make a bootable USB thumbdrive and do it that way with your Mac PC I would bet. But since I run a Win 7 PC I don't know what software you'd need for that on a Mac PC. I am sure someone can tell you in an online search without all the Windows, Mac, and Linux zealots doing their always boring thing. wink

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RE: Burning a bootable DVD copy of Mac OS X 10.7 'Lion'

ssaha 21st Jul

@derekgore You can use a terrific little freeware program (though I did contribute to the author because I use it so much) called Carbon Copy Cloner to create a USB key (I don't know if you can get away with a 4GB drive or need 8GB). CCC makes a great front end to Apple Software Restore, a command-line tool built into OSX. Of course, if you have enough command-line mojo, you could hack it out with ASR yourself.

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RE: Burning a bootable DVD copy of Mac OS X 10.7 'Lion'

derekgore 20th Jul

@msdamico@... I posted that you can probably make a bootable USB thumbdrive and do it that way and got reported as Spam?

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RE: Burning a bootable DVD copy of Mac OS X 10.7 'Lion'

derekgore Updated - 20th Jul

@derekgore I did mention the Obfuscation perpetrated here by the zealots in the one reported as spam. Shame on the person that did that.

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RE: Burning a bootable DVD copy of Mac OS X 10.7 'Lion'

bowlsys 20th Jul

I know I am a noobie, but I cannot find the Install Mac OS X Lion in my application folder after Lion has been installed. Does it get renamed or deleted after the reboot? Any help please

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RE: Burning a bootable DVD copy of Mac OS X 10.7 'Lion'

YaBaby 20th Jul

@t.stephens@... I have read elsewhere you must make the copy before you run the install.

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RE: Burning a bootable DVD copy of Mac OS X 10.7 'Lion'

Partners in Grime 20th Jul

@t.stephens@...
Yes, it disappears from the Applications folder after installation.

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RE: Burning a bootable DVD copy of Mac OS X 10.7 'Lion'

ssaha 21st Jul

@t.stephens@... The "Install Mac OS X Lion" package gets deleted once your machine is upgraded to Lion. So in order to make a copy you have to do so after downloading but before you run the installer.

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RE: Burning a bootable DVD copy of Mac OS X 10.7 'Lion'

blangton 20th Jul

A quick note...make sure you do the above BEFORE you run the Lion installer because when it's done, it zaps the install files. Now heading off to re-download 4GB of Lion for the second install of the day!

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RE: Burning a bootable DVD copy of Mac OS X 10.7 'Lion'

Kiwiiano 20th Jul

Looked very promising until we installed Lion then went to the Applications folder to find the file "Install Mac OS X Lion" and it wasn't there!?? A Spotlight search for it or "InstallESD.dmg" also drew blanks. What did you do that was different?

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RE: Burning a bootable DVD copy of Mac OS X 10.7 'Lion'

YaBaby 20th Jul

@Kiwiiano, See the comment just above yours.

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RE: Burning a bootable DVD copy of Mac OS X 10.7 'Lion'

Kiwiiano 20th Jul

Ah the risks of commenting before you've clicked through to More Comments! ;^)

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of course it"s bloated

drGspot 21st Jul

...when we remeber some old school OS-es, it is shurely a bloat:

-AmigaOS 3.1 512 kB ROM + 5 x 880kB floppy (installable on hdd); boot time from hdd 2,5 sec
-even last generation of AmigaOS 4.1 & MorphOS 2.7 (boot on MacMini G4 5 sec.) are several 10 of MB
-DOS 6.22 4-5 1.44 Mb floppies
-win3.11 for workGroups 6 floppies
-win95 15 floppies 46 MB in install (space of an old whole Netscape)
-win 98 68 floppies, 28o MB install
-QNX on a floppy (w GUI !)

...so we should send todays layers, layers, layers OS & userLand API, API, API programers back to "banging the metal" schools :-D

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YcSUu0AjIuI

drGspot

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RE: Burning a bootable DVD copy of Mac OS X 10.7 'Lion'

SMparky 24th Nov

Is there a way to download it without fooling around with the App store, which I assume wants an account etc?

And suppose your hard drive dies and you put in a new one. How does Apple expect you to download it when your computer is dead??? Oh I know, use your Windows or Linux computer and leave your Apple issues behind.

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RE: Burning a bootable DVD copy of Mac OS X 10.7 'Lion'

carmelivan 6th Dec

just discovered an after-the-fact secret: to make a bootable drive of Lion, you must do so BEFORE you actually install the system! At first I thought this was a joke, but alas it ain't. Should there not be a warning that is is the case??