Can I copy installESD.dmg to DVD or Flash and install on a different Mac?

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Level 1

4 points

Can I copy installESD.dmg to DVD or Flash and install on a different Mac?

I have downloaded Lion to my Macbook Pro. We live in a rural area and are on a "low speed" high speed internet connection, so it took me ~24 hours to download. I have not yet begun the installation process, and have copied the installesd.dmg from the install folder to my desktop. We have 3 macs in our house, and I don't want to have to try to download again, as the process is so slow. Can I just copy the installesd.dmg to a DVD or flash drive to install it on the other 2 macs?

If this is possible, do I have to do anything special? Can I install from the flash or DVD or do I need to copy onto the target mac first? Although both other macs are backed up using time machine, I'm a little nervous about just launching an installation without really knowing what I'm doing.

Posted on Jun 6, 2012 9:10 AM

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Answer 1

mende1

Level 10

93,814 points

Jun 6, 2012 9:16 AM in response to toyvin

Yes. When you buy Lion, you can install it in all your Macs. You can install it from a DVD, USB drive or from your computer if you want.

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Answer 2

keg55

Level 6

11,805 points

Jun 6, 2012 9:36 AM in response to toyvin

toyvin wrote:

Can I just copy the installesd.dmg to a DVD or flash drive to install it on the other 2 macs?

If this is possible, do I have to do anything special? Can I install from the flash or DVD or do I need to copy onto the target mac first? Although both other macs are backed up using time machine, I'm a little nervous about just launching an installation without really knowing what I'm doing.

No, you can't just copy the InstallESD.dmg file to a DVD or USB thumb drive IF you want to boot from those media and install Lion. You can follow the instructions here to burn a bootable DVD or restore a bootable USB thumb drive. You have already completed some of the steps. Just follow the steps to create a bootable DVD or USB thumb drive. The bootable media allows you to use Disk Utilities or the other Mac OS X Utilities if you need to prepare the volume you're installing on.

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