reinstalling snow leopard on new hard drive

Ok, so i want to get rid of lion and reinstall snow leopard. i have my snow leopard installation disk, but i originally installed in on a different hard drive (i had the original 120G and bought a 320G). if i erase my hard drive to get rid of lion will this disk work if it's not my original hard drive?

Yes - it will work just fine. Just curious - why are you getting rid of Lion?

it just seems like everything's slower and buggy. i've got apps randomly quitting all the time and logs out when it shouldn't and doesn't when it should. i hate the new save/duplicate thing. such a pain versus 'save as'

jeremypfitzer said:

it just seems like everything's slower and buggy. i've got apps randomly quitting all the time and logs out when it shouldn't and doesn't when it should. i hate the new save/duplicate thing. such a pain versus 'save as'

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Were your machine specs and app versions compatible with Lion ?

Did you consider formatting the drive and doing a clean install of Lion? You can download another copy from the App Store and burn it to a thumb drive, Boot from the drive, erase hard drive and proceed and then update.

jeremypfitzer,

have you tried the new install of the system?

I'm experiencing problems with an install of SL on a new HD (http://www.mac-forums.com/forums/os-x-operating-system/256050-installing-sl-new-hard-drive-after-crash.html#post1321013) and I'm curious to know if it works

be

giorgio

don't know about compatibility, but i update regularly and it's a macbook from 2009, originally with leopard.

how would doing a clean install of lion change things?

and no, i haven't tried it yet. i don't use time machine--use carbon copy cloner and a bit worried if i wipe my hard drive i won't be able to restore from carbon copy since it's the newest version and maybe designed for lion...? obviously i'm not a tech-guy.

There are quite a few people here who did the upgrade - and weren't happy with the performance - then performed a clean install and saw a significant improvement. So many in fact, that when it came time for me to put Lion on my two Macs, I just went ahead and did clean installs on both. There are still some bugs/quirks - but overall - it's been running great on both machines.

and how would i do a clean install?

Basically it goes something like this.

• Redownload Lion from the App Store
• Open the install package and pull out the installer - InstallESD.dmg - I copied it to another folder - but you don't have to
• Make a bootable disc from the installer using either a disc or USB drive (I chose USB drive). To do this - use Disc Utility, make sure your USB drive is mounted - click on the restore tab in Disc Utility, use the InstallESD.dmg file as the source and your USB drive as the target then click restore
• Make sure your Time Machine and/or clone is up to-date
• Reboot and hold down Option during the boot sequence to enable you to select your desired boot drive
• Select the bootable disc you made - and bring up disk utilities
• Reformat your primary drive, this wipes your drive - if you want to add any partitions you can do that now as well.
• Then install Lion
• Once Lion is installed - use Migration assistant to restore your files/apps from your backup

That's pretty much it in a nutshell.

great thanks!

Do you still have Lion on your Machine or did you go back to SL ??

i still have lion. why do you ask?

Because there is a easier way.


Restart your machine and immediately press and hold Command + R and this will boot to the recovery partition.
When the options menu comes up, choose to run Disk Utility. Find yourHD in the left pane. Click the Erase tab . Erase the disk. Close Disk Utility. When you come back to the menu, choose to run the install of OS X. That's pretty much it.


HTH and you don't need to burn disk this way.

Cheers

EDIT : You can use BrianLachoreVPI way to give yourself a hard copy of Lion.

thanks for the advice, i appreciate it. one question you may know the answer to...i heard that when people have done the erase it seems that some of the lion "grimlins" as they were called still remained and the best way to deal with that is to do a 7pass erase. what do you think? would the 3pass erase be just as effective?

To be honest i havnt seen or heard anything like that.
Just FYI a 3 pass will take quite some time, like into the 10's of hours and a 7 pass into days. I would be happy with a 1 pass and have only used that.
More coincidence than anything i reckon.
By all means there is nothing stopping you trying a 7pass then next week once up and running report back to us But no. I don't think it would make a difference.
Good luck

Cheers

ya, i like the idea of not waiting days. lion would probably just shut my computer off sometime in the middle of it anyway (as it seems to indescriminately do now). i can always go the long route if it's still buggy i guess. thanks again.

p.s. love the quote about the zealot...i think the mountain option might actually be a tad easier!

jeremypfitzer said:

ya, i like the idea of not waiting days. lion would probably just shut my computer off sometime in the middle of it anyway (as it seems to indescriminately do now). i can always go the long route if it's still buggy i guess. thanks again.

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Yea that could be a little painful !!!!

jeremypfitzer said:

p.s. love the quote about the zealot...i think the mountain option might actually be a tad easier!

Click to expand...

HAHA thanks. But oh so true