Lion Clean Install - No Disc Required - Recovery Partition Solution

There is a way to run a Lion clean install without unpacking the installation onto a new disc or thumb drive. It can be accomplished via a slightly longer, two-step upgrade process, which requires wiping your hard drive after you've upgraded to Lion. You must be able to connect to the internet for this option to work, as it will require downloading the install package again.

As always, be sure to back up your data before performing any sort of wipe of your hard drive.

STEP 1 - Initial Upgrade

Perform a normal Lion upgrade through the App Store. This will install Lion on top of your current configuration. It will also create a Recovery Partition, which is a new feature of the Lion OS. It is this Recovery Partition that you will use to perform the clean install.

STEP 2 - Wipe and Clean Install

• Restart your computer into Recovery mode. This can be done by either holding down CMD-r during boot up, or holding down the Option key during bootup and selecting to boot from the Recovery partition.
• Select the Disk Utility option from the main menu. Here you can select the main partition, click on the Erase tab at the top, and completely erase the partition. Once you've done this, quit Disk Utility Option, and you will return to the main menu.
• Select the Lion Installation option. It will ask you to connect to the internet if you have not done so already (if wireless, you can do this via the Wi-Fi icon in the top right corner). It will also ask you to input your Apple ID login and password in order to verify that you've already purchased the software. The installation will take as long as it requires to download the package again. Once downloaded and installed, Lion will walk you through initial set up.

This solution worked for me, but I make no guarantees that it will work for others.