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How to Install Mac OS X Lion?

Mac OS X Lion 10.7 has been release now! You may can't wait to install Mac OS X Lion, so here comes this tutorial to tell you how to install Mac OS X Lion on other personal machines is by using Target Disk Mode.

Requirements:
* At least two Macs – one to serve as the installer, and the recipient Mac where Lion is going to be installed on;
* All Macs must have FireWire and/or ThunderBolt and support Target Disk Mode, as well as the accompany cable to directly connect two Macs: FireWire to FireWire cable and Thunderbolt cable;
* Mac OS X Lion downloaded from the Mac App Store on one of the Macs;
* At least 4GB of spare disk space to create an install partition.

Note: This technique modifies a hard disks partition table. Generally nothing should go wrong, but it is always wise to have a recent backup of your hard drive before making any changes to drive partitions.

Step 1: Find and locate the InstallESD.dmg file

* Locate "Install Mac OS X Lion.app" inside your /Applications folder, right click and select "Show Package Contents". After that, open "Contents" and then 'SharedSupport';
* Double-click on InstallESD.dmg to mount the image and launch "Disk Utility" located in /Applications/Utilities/;
* Select the hard drive you want to use to create a boot partition on, and then click on "Partition";
* Click the plus icon to create a new partition, name it "Mac OS X Install ESD" to match the mounted Lion dmg.

Step 2: Show hidden files in Mac OS X Finder, do this with the following two commands:

* Defaults write com.apple.Finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE
* Restart the Finder for changes take effect with the following command: killall Finder

Now back in the Mac OS X finder open the previously mounted Lion installation DMG and you will see all files like this:

* Select everything except for .DS_Store and copy all of the files over to the partition you previously created – getting all of the files is necessary, this is why enabling hidden file support is important;
* Let all files copy over to the drive partition.

Step 3: Now the Mac OS X Install ESD partition is ready to use by other Macs via Target Disk Mode.

On the Mac with the OS X Lion Install Partition:
* Open System Preferences and click on "Startup Disk";
* Click on "Target Disk Mode" to reboot the Mac into Target Disk Mode ready to be used as another Macs hard drive.

Once the Installer Mac is in Target Disk Mode, connect it to the other Mac via Firewire or ThunderBolt, then:

On the Mac where you want to Install Mac OS X Lion using Target Disk Mode:
* Open 'System Preferences' and click on "Startup Disk";
* Select the Installer Macs partition named "Mac OS X Install ESD" as your boot drive and restart.

The recepient Mac will now boot from the Mac OS X Lion installer partition via Target Disk Mode (TDM). TDM is really fast thanks to FireWire and ThunderBolt speeds and this is probably the quickest way to install Lion on another Mac without just downloading it again from the App Store.

Done! That's all the steps of how to install Mac OS X Lion 10.7 using Target Disk Mode. Just enjoy your Mac as you wish!

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