PROTIP: Time Machine/Lion Issue When Replacing HD

I need to write up a big warning to anyone else who uses Lion, Time Machine, and needs to replace their hard drive. After spending 14 hours yesterday trying to correct what could have been easily avoided, I hope I can save a few more people from running into the same issue.

My late 2009 27" iMac's hard drive (running Lion) recently began to die. I manually replaced it with a new one, went in and partitioned it, and I grabbed the install DVD I have for OSX 10.6.2 and began installing the ol' Snow Leopard.

Naturally, the next step I took was what I thought to be a logical one... especially because I was prompted to do it when Snow Leopard was installing: I plugged in my Time Machine external drive and began restoring from my last Time Machine backup.

DO NOT DO THIS!!!!! DO NOT DO THIS!!!!! DO NOT DO THIS!!!!!

First, get Snow Leopard up and running. If you've used an install disc prior to 10.6.6 (the first OS with Mac App Store), download the Software Update to get you up to 10.6.8. Then use the Mac App Store to re-install Lion, then once that's done you can recover from your old Time Machine backup.

That's the end of the lesson. Read on if you're curious.

---------------------

This is what happens when you don't:
First of all, because I had lots of issues trying to boot up (regularly, in safe mode, or even to the disc) I suspect that the Lion apps being on there when the Snow Leopard OS is running causes some stability issues. But that's another story...

In my case, my Snow Leopard install disc was 10.6.2... so I had Snow Leopard, but my Time Machine will give me back the Lion version of the Mac App Store, which is not compatible with anything prior to Lion. BUT I CANT GET LION WITHOUT THE APP STORE! And you can't just get the Mac App Store without it being bundled in with an OS, so I deleted the app and used the Software Update to get me up to 10.6.8, hoping it will restore me with the app and at an older version which would be compatible with S.L.

Well guess what, I had other Users on my Time Machine backup and so the app wasn't overwritten. So... I had to delete my other users, delete the App store again, and reinstall the OS from scratch again. In hindsight, I could have probably reinstalled 10.6.8 or 10.6.6, but I was tired at this point. So I popped in my 10.6.2 disc and got it working. And just so I wouldn't run into any more issues, I slowly upgraded to 10.6.6 and then to 10.6.8, then used Mac App store to get Lion. Then I used Time Machine to restore my HD contents and my old admin user w/ settings still in tact.

Ahh. 14 hours. So not worth it.

-----------------------------

Making your OS only available through an OTA update is questionable, first. But then making the app that allows you to get that OTA update only work with the OS it lets you download is a BIG BIG BIG mistake, Apple!