Trouble installing Lion on bootable external HD

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I don't have a fast/stable Internet connection, so had to buy the USB Lion stick from Apple. All the WiFi problems I've heard about made me leery of installing it right out of the box on my iMac 3.06 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo (Snow Leopard). So I want to install it first on an external hard drive, boot from that drive, and test drive it for awhile to make sure it runs okay.

I formatted the external HD (1 partition / GUID format), inserted the Lion USB stick, clicked install, and selected the ex HD. All seemed to go smoothly, until the automatic restart. The computer never got past a gray screen, and instead of the apple pic, it showed a circle with a slash through it. I was eventually forced to shut the iMac down via the power button on the back. (I know that's not good, but there really didn't seem to be another way.)

When I turned the computer on again, it booted up fine with my regular Snow Leopard (as it should). I checked the ex HD I'd supposedly installed Lion on. There were a bunch of files on it, but almost all of them looked like various unopened installer files... lots of them. No wonder my iMac couldn't boot up from it properly. The Start Up Disk in Preferences doesn't recognize it either.

Did I miss a crucial step somewhere? Anyone know how I can make this work?

Thanks!
 
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Thanks for the link. Good information to know for the future, but I think it doesn't apply in my current case since I have not installed Lion on my internal HD yet. My iMac is still running Snow Leopard. Also, the external HD (which worked fine before as a routine backup drive) that I tried to install Lion on never did show up in Preferences>StartUpDisk after the "installation" as a selectable startup disk.

I'm worried now after seeing the strange files on the ex HD, that installing Lion on my iMac will do the same thing-- replace working system files with unbootable installer files.
 
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Your Mac's Specs
mbp 15 2009, mbp 13 2010
at this point you will have to install direct to your imac, see how it works. I had no issue when I install lion on second mbp after downloading from app store.
 
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If Lion causes too many problems and I just don't like it after installation on my iMac, can I downgrade back to Snow Leopard without having to do a clean erase/installation? For that matter, is it possible to downgrade at all?
 

chscag

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Your Mac's Specs
2017 27" iMac, 10.5" iPad Pro, iPhone 8, iPhone 11, iPhone 12 Mini, Numerous iPods, Monterey
I don't have a fast/stable Internet connection, so had to buy the USB Lion stick from Apple. All the WiFi problems I've heard about made me leery of installing it right out of the box on my iMac 3.06 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo (Snow Leopard). So I want to install it first on an external hard drive, boot from that drive, and test drive it for awhile to make sure it runs okay.

Why do all that extra work? Just create a good Time Machine backup to your external hard drive, install Lion the way it should be on your internal hard drive. If something goes wrong, boot from your Snow Leopard DVD and restore using your Time Machine backup.

And, as far as I'm aware, there are no WiFi problems with Lion. I upgraded my iMac from SL to Lion and the WiFi never skipped a beat.
 

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