'Clean' 10.8 Install for New HDD

Hold command option r keys and boot the machine for Internet Recovery and use that Disk Utility to format the entire drive 1 partition, option GUID and OS X extended journaled, quit and install OS X, then upgrade via AppStore.

If your machine doesn't have Internet Recovery, then use the 10.6. install disks and work from there up.

Recovery HD is a parittion on the old drive, since the drive switched with a blank one and you don't want to Carbon Copy Cloner the old drive (with it's RecoveryHD) then this is what you need to do.

Good Luck 🙂

How to reformat a used Mac

Erase, formatting, OS X installs on Mac's

How to erase and install Snow Leopard 10.6

Yes, starting up in Recovery Mode will allow you to download and install Mountain Lion onto the New HDD.

But there is a catch, the new HDD must first be set up GUID Partition Table and Mac OS Extended (Journaled) before you can Install OS X and use it as a Startup Drive.

What I do is:

1. Pop the new HDD into the Enclosure

2. Connect the External HD up to the iMac

3. Go to Applcations Utilities and open Disk Utility

4. Highlight the new HDD in the list of drives and select the Partition tab

5. Under Volume Scheme select 1 Partition and click on the Options... button

6. Select GUID Partition Table in the drop down window and click the OK... button

7. Next set the Format to Mac OS Extended (Journaled) and click the Apply... button

8. Once thats done, startup into Recovery Mode, Download and Install ML on the new HDD

9. Restart holding the Option key and from Startup Manager select the new OS X on the HDD

10. Then only after starting up from and testing the new OS X on the new HDD, move it to the iMac

Yes booting to the recovery hd partition on the old drive in a enclosure willl allow you to partition the new drive and then install mountain lion on that drive. You have to use disk utility first to partition the drive as one partition formatted mac extended (journaled) with a partition table of guid for os x mountain lion to install on it. But after you do that you should have no trouble installing sa clean fresh copy of mountain lion on that new drive.

Once the install is complete you can use setup assistant to copy over your personal files only or those and program and setting from the old drive in the enclosure. That is up to you. But even if you don't use that option you can still copy over your personal files later. But I wouldn't suggesst using migration assistant. Just copy them manually froom the old drive to the new.

wb4fly wrote:

I'm installing a new HDD but do not want to clone the entire contents from my old HDD, just the mountain lion system platform. Reason being is that I want to start with a 'clean slate' without any 3rd party software, etc.

• If I boot from the old HDD that's connected via an external enclosure, will Recovery allow me to select the new HDD and download mountain lion?

• Or do I have to first configure the new HDD with 10.6.8 then use Recovery (once booted to the old HDD with mountain lion) to download mountain lion to the new HDD?

What I'm not clear on is whether Recovery will allow me to select the new HDD and download, even with the old HDD on board.

If there's another procedure for accomlishing my goal aside from what I mentioned above I'd greatly appreciate any guidance.

Thanks.

Internet recovery won't save any steps. The steps are exactly the same whether you use the internet recovery system or the recovery hd partition on your old drive. Once you boot your mac from either the steps are the same. As I noted above.

wb4fly wrote:

Thanks for the additional guidance and links. I do have internet recovery so that should save some steps. I'll be sure to respond back and give feedback to your reply once the operation is underway. Much obliged!

Your welcome...!

If you run into trouble using Recovery. You could also prep the new HDD and install OS X 10.6 using your Install Disc set, update to 10.6.8 using the Combo Updater, then use your same App Store Account and Upgrade to 10.8.

As I didn't read the bottom of your first post, where it says you have a 2008 mac, then because of your model year the internet recovery system is not available to that year mac. So your only options are to use the recovery hd from your old drive or to reinstall the original os x version then upgrade to snow leopard and update that to 10.6.8 or use the snow leopard upgrade dvd to install that and then upgrade that to 10.6.8 and then use the mac app store to install mountain lion.

But if you can access the recovery hd on the old drive that would be the shortest and easiest way to reinstall mountain lion on the new drive.

But then you would not have the ilife apps and would need to reinstall them from the original system discs. But there is a problem with trying to do that. Those ilife app versions might not be compatible with mountain lion. So you would need to start from the beginning with the original os x install then the ilife apps then the upgrade to snow leopard then the update for that and the ilife apps update/upgrade then mountian lion then run software update again to bring everything back up to date.

The difference between the internet recovery system and booting the system to the built in recovery hd on the internal drive is the internet system boots the computer from across the internet from the apple servers. That is only available for systems that came with lion or mountain lion preinstalled or some slightly older mac's with a firmware update. But as far as I know the internet boot system will not allow you to reinstall lion or mountain lion as it does not have a way to check your qualifications, apple id, to download those versions of os x. That might of changed but for a mac from earlier then late 2010 that option isn't even available.

So what you have been starting the system from is the built in system. Which will work if your original drive is still connected to the system either internally or externally by usb or firewire. With that you can partition a new drive and install lion or mountain lion on the new drive, whichever version of the recovery hd it on the original drive.

Once the old drive fails or is disconnected from the system the recovery system will no longer be available to you. Unless you reconnect the original drive and have a working recovery hd partition on that original drive.

You can make a usb thumb drive of the recovery hd partition by using the lion recovery disk assistant program that you download from the apple download site. With that program and a working os x and recovery hd partition you run the program with a usb stick attached and it will copy the recovery hd file to it so you can then boot the computer from that usb stick and do all of the disk utility work and reinstall os x.