How do I install Mountain Lion on a blank harddrive?

You're welcome.

If i were you I would upgrade to Snow Leopard (10.6) and stay on that, it's an excellent way to spend $20.

If you purchase Mountain Lion you're good to go. Download the recovery disk utility directly from the Apple website before you do anything. As long as you have an Internet connection you can wipe, and wipe, and wipe until your butt is content. Plug in your USB guy and select it at startup (just hold down "option"). Through miracles of modern science it will download and install a fresh copy of ML....if you follow the directions. Keep in mind you can't use an iMac, or a MacBook, or a MacPro, or even a MacMini from the 1950's before they existed, but if you enter your serial number in the tech specs portion of the site you can nip the, "I wonder if it is compatible?" - in the bud. You gotta spend to lend.

@Shwaggmaster - Thanks, but the information you're providing seems to contradict what others have said.

In particular, others have stated that I can only purchase Mountain Lion by going to the Mac App Store from a Mac running Snow Leopard or later. (Still unclear whether I can purchase it on one machine, running a recent Mac operating system, and then install it onto a different machine.)

Also, you mention "tech specs portion of the site". Can you provide a URL for that location? (Preferably a URL I can browse to regardless of what operating system I happen to be running.)

You say I can't use a MacBook. Huh? Other information indicates that ML will run on newer MacBooks.

It appears the whole thing is moot, however, because I don't think I can run ML on the MacBook 4.1 that I have. Maybe I'll spend $20 on Snow Leopard. Or maybe I'll just install Debian and forget the whole Apple way of doing things. :-)

You've already receive your answers in other replies which are quite good. I would like to add a bit of explanation of what the deal is. You cannot do anything on a computer without a running system. I know this is trivial but many people don't think like that because there are used to it being taken care of for them.

Whether you want to install MAC OS X, Linux, WIndows ???, on a blank system (only disk does not have an OS on it), you need an attachable device from whihc you boot the install OS. With Linux and Windows, your install disk is a bootable device (whether CD, DVD, USB drive, or jump drive). When you instruct the computer to boot from it (the procedure varies with hardware. Sometimes you need to change the BIOS settings to have it look for removable bootable media. MAC OS X Snow leopard came that way as well. You put the install media in the drive and start the computer. Follow the instructions on the screen. Mac OS X used to be that way and Linux and Windows still are for now.

When Apple released Lion, they changed their world. They did not distribute by DVDs any more. WHen they installed Lion, they install the OS partition and a recovery partition. So you could fix it if the OS partition got hosed. Not well advertised but understood by many, it was possible if you bought your OS upgrade at the Mac App Store, from any Mac you could run on, you could log into the MAS and download the installer for that OS. Some have written utiities such as Lion Disk Maker that can run on some MAC system of recent vintage and install the downloaded Install image to a USB drive whihc you can boot and install on a clean system. This is quite useful if you had a disk hardware failure and need to replace the hard drive with a blank one.

Since the OS X on the boot image must work with the system you are using, you need to download the boot image from a version that has your computer hwardware in mind. This means if you replace the computer as well as the HD, you need a downloaded install image created after the new hardware was released. I ran into that issue and got help from the Lion Disk Maker developer.

Having install images that will run on any compatible hardware out there can be an issue and for that reason, OS manufacturers from time to time obsolete certain hardware. That was apparently the issue with the current question.

People have installed OS X on vanilla Intel computer systems. But Apple does not support that and does not like it as besides the loss of hardware sales, it makes the support issues far more difficult to deal with. That is one place hwere Microsoft has a very hard world to work with. For years I would swear at Hewlett Packard PCs since their engineers always wanted to do it better. What they did was not always compatible and I had a lot of hardware compibility issues. They had trouble learning that Standard was better then Better. By not supporting clones, Apple avoided tht problem. They are also a more expensive hardware solution.

I can afford Apple Hardware and i find that makes life very easy. I once bought what seemed like a pretty good HP tower system and spent years trying to keep Linux working. Everything was non-standard. If I wanted to run Windows, they had an answer for that but Linux, (we do not support Linux on that model - official HP reply).

I've worked on low level software / firmware on Intel PCs. It is not as easy as it might seem. You can do everyhint using BIOS calls but then it is slow as molasass.

Bruce

Clymbon:

I do this all the time with the Mac's that I work with. As long as you have ML tied to your Apple ID, you can boot and perform and erase and install from USB/FireWire (if you have the Recovery Disk Assistant). ML also has a built in recovery partition.

As far as the URL: http://support.apple.com/specs/

Click "browse by product" and enter your serial number in the search field. Pretty much anything with a with an Intel Core2Duo or less won't work with ML.

I was generalizing when I was mentioning types of equipment. 🙂

Cheers

"As long as you have ML tied to your Apple ID". Oops - you just lost me again. 😟 Can you translate that into generic computer-science language? (Guess: Something to do with the way Apple keeps track of who has paid for what software...)

Bruce, thanks for the explanation. I understand bootloaders, BIOS, operating systems, etc..., having worked with everything from real-time embedded systems, PDP minicomputers, VAXs, Unix and Linux boxes of all flavors running on different hardware, and even (holding nose) DOS and Windows systems. What I *don't* understand is how Apple does things, that's all. I've never owned one and never had the need to work on one, except on occasion trying to help my GF solve problems with hers. (Test of a relationship - ask your girlfriend how to get the equivalent of "right-click" on a Mac.)

Observation: I think people with some computer science education or experience tend to have a much harder time understanding "Apple-speak" than people with no background whatsoever. That's not really surprising, since Apple tries to set things up, and explain things in such a way, that people with no computer background will find it easy to understand. In doing so, they create their own unique concepts and terminology. No doubt the Apple concepts are useful and well thought out, but they do take some getting used to.

Duncan

Sorry Duncan. I was referring to Mountain Lion when I said ML. Your Apple ID is what you create to use for the App Store, or iTunes. Once you log in with your Apple ID and purchase the Mountain Lion Software, it will forever be tied to your Apple ID. This way when you use recovery disk assistant to install Mountain Lion, you can simply download and install it during the recovery process.

I have a Mac mini it's a 2005 model that was updated to an intel core 2 duo processor, it needs a brand new harddrive installed. How do I go about putting the Mac OS back on it without a boot disc? It didn't have one when I got it.

It's running lion right now but the harddrive is crap and needs replaced.

Lion Diskmaker

If it is a 2005 Mac Mini it should only be capable of a maximum of 2GB of RAM. Anything after Lion and you're going to have a hard time with your system. What makes you think the hard drive is bad? Sounds like you just don't have enough RAM to run the OS properly. You'll want at least 4 GB. I would get an updated Mac. You should probably purchase Mountain Lion as well.

But if you are bound and determined...

Go here: http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1433

This will let you install OS without a disk.

Because it's not the programs freezing or showing signs of decreased ram it's losing things that are store don't he harddrive and program files

Okay this is my deal.. i have an macbook pro but i never purchased mountain lion os x. so my laptop is basically usless! Pleaseee HELP, I have no clue what to do!!!

Jordene wrote:

Okay this is my deal.. i have an macbook pro but i never purchased mountain lion os x. so my laptop is basically usless! Pleaseee HELP, I have no clue what to do!!!

You can start by starting your own thread and describing what your specific problem is.