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Good point BUT there is no compatible App Store or Apple Store version that works with the latest MBAirs. These versions (App Store and Apple Store) are NOT compatible with 'internet only' Macs. The only way is to use the method here to capture the version designed by Apple for the new MBA's - internet only - type computers.. I think the Mini and others may have the same problem. No internet connection - no restore. No other 'key' is compatible.
L2C

While that's true, if you don't force-quit, it will reboot your system and install Lion on the disk you selected, tying your machine up for a half-hour. If all you wanted to do is get the installer, force-quitting is more efficient.

Thanks for this Charles. I tested it and it does indeed work just fine. A few things to note from my experience.
1. You don't have to worry about the installer restarting. It isn't timed. The window will remain there asking for user input till it gets it.
2. You don't need to force quit the installer. Just right click on the Dock icon and select 'quit'. The installer will ask for confirmation and shutdown. That's it.
3. I couldn't get it to install within Lion on an external partition. It shot up an installation screen with a progress bar, but when I rebooted, it didn't actually install Lion on the target volume. But I still had the installation files and the partition read 'Mac OS X Install' so I selected that, and then it went through a proper install sequence, putting a fresh copy of Lion on the drive. Thus I think if you copied the entire folder and all it's contents (not just the InstallESD.dmg) to your target drive and called it 'Mac OS X Install', you should be able to boot from it and finish off the installation that way. It would just take a few more minutes having to copy the files over but at least you won't have to go through the pain of ever downloading it again.
I'm sure it would work using the InstallESD.dmg from boot, but it does not if you run the installer within Lion.

In my experience, the restart *is* timed — I left this running and walked away, and when I got back, the TextWrangler document I had left open was prompting me to save it before quitting.

In 10.7.1 on a Mid-2011 Mini, the installer did prompt me after downloading to restart or quit. It did NOT attempt to reboot on it's own. I had open TextWrangler just in case, but it never came to that.
However, if you merely quit normally, all downloaded files will be deleted. You MUST force quit in order to retain the InstallESD.dmg.
It may work differently on a machine that does not come pre-installed with Lion.

It may be that things have changed in 10.7.1. When I originally did this, it was with the 10.7.0 installer, and it definitely did reboot on its own (following a 30 or 60 second delay after finishing the download). It was similar to what happens when you finish installing the OS. It prompts you to reboot the machine, but if there's no input from you within a certain period of time, it assumes you've walked away from the machine and reboots it.
This may have changed for the 10.7.1 installer, but since it doesn't hurt anything to set up a little insurance against it rebooting, I still prefer to do that, particulary since even assuming that it has changed, there is no guarantee that it won't change *back* at some point.

doesn't work for me.
tried it twice to an external hd but no matter how fast you are it deletes the folder immediately and leaves you with some hidden files totalling 230mb,
just wasted 10gb of my monthly download allocation :(

That's really odd, and not what I experienced. If it is doing this, you could get around it by making a hard link of the file while it is downloading, and putting it in a different folder. This way, even if the installer manages to delete InstallESD.dmg, you'll still have a copy sitting around somewhere else, since a file doesn't get deleted until all of its hard links are deleted.

What Is Installed Dmg Partially

I attempted the above hint and got as far as the Lion Installer beginning to download. The following message appears:
An error occurred while preparing the installation. Try running this application again.
I have rebooted, attempted to perform the same task using a Lion Recovery USB drive, and again from the Recovery partition; same thing every time.
Any advice would be appreciated. I am setting this up for my father as he does not have access to high speed internet.
Called Apple and the tech confirmed that the ready made $69 Apple USB drive shall now work with Mac Mini with Lion preinstalled.
Could 10.7.1 have broken this hint's ability?

When originally reading the hint, I misread something Charles had said:
Once it asks you for a disk to install on, choose the external drive or spare partition. (Or the boot partition if you're feeling gutsy. As long as you don't let the installer reboot, it shouldn't be able to install anything, but I like to err on the side of caution.)
I took that to mean that I could attempt to install on the drive from which I was currently running Lion. This does not seem to be the case. Once I prepared a properly formatted external USB HDD, I went through the steps again and they worked flawlessly. Upon exiting the installer, prior to rebooting, I inserted an 8 GB flash drive, restored the InstallESD.dmg to it, tested it by doing a fresh install of Lion onto aforementioned external HDD and it all works fine. In hindsight, I would have preferred using a larger flash drive (perhaps 16 GB would have worked?) as the destination of the install.
Thank you so much for the hint. As a result of it, I shall be mailing my father a $13 flash drive copy of Lion instead of a $70 one.

Installesd.dmg Lion

One thing I'm not clear on with this - is the 'InstallESD.dmg' that you get via this mechanism a different installer than the one you get from the App Store? (Is the App Store one only an upgrader?)

The app store version is a full version - just not compatible with the new MBA's that are internet connection only. Same with Apple store version key. For example, I bought an 11' MBA in August 2011 just before the 'new' MBA's came out. The App store version works fine with that. In October I bought a 13' MBA and it came pre-installed with Lion, no media, no internet recovery assistant (which meant waiting for ages via Apple Servers just to get the *menu* with options like restore from Time Machine Backup, etc. before one could begin to reinstall Lion itself). Now there is a Recovery Assistant key you can make (instructions are at Apple) which saves that 1/2 hour or so of waiting for the menu options but it is not an actual install key. It just speeds up getting to the menu/internet recovery. After that it can take hours over the internet. So the above is the only way I've found for a real install that is *compatible* with the new hardware/firmware of the post August/early Sep 2011 Macs.
L2C

well I finally got it to work to a partition (80gb) on an external drive, but when I try it on a formatted 8gb stick, I get the message not enough room.
weird.
any suggestions?

I was successful with a 32G USB stick. It appears to need a lot of free space while downloading etc. but once over - the remaining files incuding the install dmg take up about 4 G. What I don't know is whether it needs a lot of free space on the install disk/stick when using it.
L2C

thanks. it was a few months ago that I posted the query and had success using this method under 'Macsysadmins are smarter' :)
http://goo.gl/yszMx

That's great. Perhaps you can help me though. I now have a 32G USB stick with an InstallESD.dmg and other files on it left there by the download. I burnt the InstallESD.img to another 8 G stick. But I don't how to use them! How do you get a hosed MBA to boot from the USB key? How do you reinstall? It's those vital steps I'm missing (I'm fairly new to Mac) and if you have the 1,2,3 of 'how' I'd really appreciate it! I imagine there are key combos?
L2C

I'm relatively new to Mac period. However, as the owner of a new 'medialess/internet only' MBA 13' I was so unhappy that I've followed the instructions here to get this on a 32G USB Flash Drive. Right now I have InstallESD.dmg along with InstallESD.dmg.partialState, MacOS_10_7_IncompatibleAppList.pkg,index.sproduct, InstallESD.chunklist.partial on the USB Drive.
So I appear to have the InstallESD.dmg. What I don't understand is how to use this now if my MBA crashes? How would I use this as a boot disk? Can someone enlighten me please?
For anyone else wanting to do this - If you have Office for Mac and open Word, a file, and do File Save As, it prevents your computer from restarting - although I was fairly quick with the Force Quit once all activity had stopped and it wanted to install.
Meanwhile - any advice on how to *use* this USB drive would be appreciated. Actually it is only showing 3.90 G use (4G) now on it so maybe I could transfer it to another USB - but then again I'm not sure if it needs a lot of free space when it does 'boot' or install? I have only one 'mission' critical MBA so I can't experiment for myself.
As you can see - there's a lot I don't know re Mac/Apple but I'm an old DOS (1.1) PC user since the 80s - I'm just on a long learning curve here. All help very much appreciated.

Open disk utility, right click on InstallESD.dmg and choose 'restore'. Restore it to a DVD, flash dive, etc and you should be able to boot from it in case your harddrive crashes (by holding down the option key at startup)

Thanks very much. Is 'restore' different than having the InstallESD.dmg on the 32G USK key with those extra files - all straight from the download? I'm asking because the free space on the 32G is quite large and I could find better uses for it - or would it matter if I have extra files on it besides the InstallESD.dmg file? In other words is there something about the procedure 'Restore' to an external USB which makes it into a boot disk vs just having the InstallESD.dmg from the original Lion 'capture'?
L2C

The other files you have on the usb drive aren't necessary. You have the OS X Lion disk image (InstallESD.dmg) which you need to 'extract' to a disk (via the restore option, don't just open it and copy over files)
You could partition your thumb drive into separate partitions, one to restore the install image to and another for storing files. I suppose you could restore the disk image to the whole thing and copy files directly to it (although it would be quite cluttered, it shouldn't affect the install)
I would just use a regular DVD or smaller thumbdrive personally :P
Hope that helps.

Indeed it helps immensely. I now have a sense of what to do!
I really appreciate the time you've taken - good netizenship is so great.
All the Best
L2C

I can do this step:
'Now, from the newly mounted Mac OS X Base System image, double-click the 'Install Mac OS X' application at the root of the disk. Surprisingly, it launches, even when booted into a standard Mac OS X user account from the hard drive!'
But can't get to this step:
'Go through the license agreement. Once it asks you for a disk to install on, choose the external drive or spare partition. (Or the boot partition if you're feeling gutsy. As long as you don't let the installer reboot, it shouldn't be able to install anything, but I like to err on the side of caution.)'
I double click the 'Install Mac OS X Lion.app' icon and then it opens and then I get to the 'To set up the installation of Mac OS X 10.7, click Continue' screen.
I click continue and it says 'To download and restore Mac OS X, your computer's eligibility will be verified with Apple.' I hit 'Continue' there.
Then it says, 'Loading Installation information ...' for a little bit. Then finally, 'An error occurred while preparing the installation. Try running this application again.'
Any thoughts? Is the issue that I never bought Lion? The way I got Lion on this mac is that I had sent this in for repair last year and during the process, they wiped out the hard drive which had Snow Leopard and this was installed on instead.

This hint will only work for machines that were shipped from the factory with Lion. If Lion was installed on the machine after the fact, this hint won't download the installer.

I have a Macbook Pro with a blank hard drive, new format. and I have an installation disc of Mac OS X Lion. I have no original record of the Mac I got it to make it work. I need support to install your Mac OS X Lion as the steps I follow when I get the disk utility does not display the hard drive required for installation.
Thanks in advance for any support.
Greetings!
Greg.

I can't thank y'all enough for all of this information and the various helpful replies and suggestions. After some trial and error it worked like a charm and was the final, detailed solution I've been searching for, for awhile now. After discovering this incredibly useful hint and Mac OS X Hints forum via a link on Lion DiskMaker (US), I used the LDM donation-ware to create a very nice and well made bootable USB flash drive using the InstallESD.dmg. You might want to check it out. Many thanks CharlesS et al!!!

Thanks! I was wondering how the heck I can start fresh on my new late 2012 model Mac Mini. (I'm installing a new SSD drive myself) So far so good! I have the new custom Mountain Lion 10.8.1 USB boot disk ready to go. (DVD burned too just in case) It's a shame I didn't realize I didn't have small enough bits to take out the drives. I guess I'll have to go shopping tomorrow for tools

What Is Installesd Dmg Partial View

currently Feb 2013.
There's this:
http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1433
works great, takes 2 mins.
Reboot with option held.
Booted fine on 2011 MBA as well as 1st gen MacPro 1,1 Xeon from 2007 or so.

I found this
http://goo.gl/d0ryX
and it worked better.
I think Charles steps are right, but perhaps Apple has made some changes since his entry.
In any case, my 2011 MBA (10.7.5) did reboot to install, even though I had another app open.
The first time I tried this, all the files were deleted from my ext USB stick.
But I believe I forced quit or quit, rather than extracting the USB stick when the MBA went to restart for install.
This seems to be the difference, at least in my experience. YMMD.
After pulling the USB, I also zapped the pRam as a safety measure.
When I remounted the USB stick, InstallESD.dmg was there in Mac OS X Install Data folder.
I copied InstallESD.dmg to my internal drive.
I partitioned the USB stick into 2x 8G (hoping to fit ML on it as well)
Then I went thru the other steps and made the bootable version with DU.

This is not related to this article.
It will only copy the Recovery partition to another disk, then you still need
an internet connection to download the Real Installer.
It is not needed since latest Macs have internet Recovery built into the
Firmware.

I've been to quite a few websites trying to glean info on How to get a full Lion Install disk for a MacBook Pro or a MacBook Air (have both).
I found the article posted by Charles S :' Sep 07, '11 07:30:00AM • Contributed by: CharlesS' to be the ticket. I was able to replicate everything EXACTLY as he described it with the Terminal App in my Utility folder.
HOWEVER- the only thing I did do differently was I plugged an 8gb USB Drive into a USB port on each machine and did the installation there. Charles reports:
'To avoid messing up your one and only good Lion installation, I recommend getting an external drive big enough to install Lion on. An external hard drive or separate partition is great. A large USB flash drive might work, but I haven't tried it.'
The other thing to do is MAKE SURE YOU OPEN A TEXT App (like TextEdit) so that if you do leave the computer- it WILL NOT REBOOT your machine. Make sure you SELECT SAVE for the document you opened and leave that window there from TextEdit to keep the machine from rebooting. I did this late at night, went to bed and the next morning the MacBook Pro/Air were waiting to reboot- BUT HADN'T BECAUSE TextEdit WAITING TO SAVE THE DOCUMENT! Force Quit the Installer (Option/Command/ESC) and your done. I quit TextEdit as well.
Next I copied the resulting folder from the USB Drive to my Desk Top and fired up Lion DiskMaker ( http://liondiskmaker.com/ ). Lion DiskMaker makes Lion & Mountain Lion Boot Disks really easy so POINT LION DiskMaker to the newly created folder on your Desk Top to the InstallESD.dmg program. I used the 8gb USB Drive (that's why I saved the contents from the USB Drive to a folder on my Desk Top) that I already had plugged into the MacBook Pro/Air. Lion DiskMaker erases the 8gb USB Drive and creates the BootDrive. It's that easy. I unmounted the Recovery HD drive and the OS X 10.8.2 Base System drive when I was finished. This worked great on my MacBook Pro 13' (latest 2.9ghz i7 non Retina) 2012 model & my MacBook Air 11' (latest 2.0ghz i7) 2012 model.

Thanks, Charles! This should be a sticky post!
I would add just two things:
1. This works for Mountain Lion, too! (OS X 10.8.x) You might want to modify the title of your post accordingly.
2. This hint could be especially useful to folks who have just brought home their first Mac. They might need extra help putting the .dmg file onto a (bootable) USB drive. It would be helpful to add specific instructions (expanding the helpful comment by mrfunke above):
-Open Disk Utility and select the 'Restore' tab.
-In the 'Source' field, insert the InstallESD.dmg file you downloaded. (If the file doesn't appear on the navigation list on the left, click the 'Image' button to the right of the 'Source' field to locate the file.)
-In the 'Destination' field, select the USB drive.
-Click the 'Restore' button at the bottom of the Disk Utility window.
-When the restoration is finished, you should have a bootable USB drive to install Lion (or Mountain Lion)!
Thanks again everyone!

I am responding because part of OP thread and one other method has worked for me.
My original issue:
Macbook Air 1st generation the Hard Drive got corrupted and would not boot up. Verify disk and Repair disk were greyed out on the Mac Image. Repair disk failed when I tried on the hard drive with error 'Invalid Sibling Link'. Was not able to unmount the drive or erase it either both failed. Recovery Partition was also locked and not accessible. Tried every possible solution. Sent in for a quote at an Apple Repair Centre and they came back saying the Hard Drive is corrupted and cannot be used, needs to be exchanged with a new one for a cost of £192. Tried searching everywhere online to find a bootable image of Mountain Lion but that also didn't work. So then I came to this thread and this is what I did:
P.S. I also have a Macbook Pro which is working perfectly fine so I used the steps on that to create the bootable USB.
So I followed up to this part
Open the Terminal, and type this command to list all partitions on your hard drive or SSD:
diskutil list
Look for 'Recovery HD' in the list, and note its identifier. It will be something of the form diskXsY, where X and Y are numeric digits. (On my machine, it's disk0s3).
Type the following command to mount the recovery HD:
diskutil mount readOnly /dev/[identifier]
Replace [identifier] above with the identifier from step 2. So on my machine, I typed:
diskutil mount readOnly /dev/disk0s3
The disk image inside the recovery HD is invisible, so use the Terminal to mount that too:
hdiutil attach '/Volumes/Recovery HD/com.apple.recovery.boot/BaseSystem.dmg'
Then I went ahead and installed Lion DiskMaker from here http://liondiskmaker.com/ ran that application and inserted a 8GB USB Drive. The application found the Mountain Lion Image from my computer which was visible after following the first five steps of this thread and created a copy of it on my USB, and made it bootable. Then I went back to the faulty Macbook Air. Turn the Power on and held CMD/Option + R until the Apple logo came up and then let it go. After 5 minutes or so the DiskUtility screen came up, and from there I choose the Startup Disk option from the top menu. Make sure the USB you created is plugged in so it can detect the new image and then the computer will restart with that USB, and just follow the on-screen instructions from there.

Question:
Will an installer acquired this way be linked to the Apple ID that downloaded it? I am building an image for new iMacs and can't have it linked to an Apple ID. It needs to remain generic.
Thanks

This step didn't seem to work for me:
'The disk image inside the recovery HD is invisible, so use the Terminal to mount that too:
hdiutil attach '/Volumes/Recovery HD/com.apple.recovery.boot/BaseSystem.dmg'
Now, from the newly mounted Mac OS X Base System image, double-click the 'Install Mac OS X' application at the root of the disk.'
I can't find the 'newly mounted Mac OS X Base System image...' Where should I be seeing it?

These advanced steps are primarily for system administrators and others who are familiar with the command line. You don't need a bootable installer to upgrade macOS or reinstall macOS, but it can be useful when you want to install on multiple computers without downloading the installer each time.

Download macOS

Find the appropriate download link in the upgrade instructions for each macOS version:

• macOS Catalina, macOS Mojave, and macOS High Sierra download directly to your Applications folder as an app named Install macOS Catalina, Install macOS Mojave or Install macOS High Sierra. If the installer opens after downloading, quit it without continuing installation.
  To get the required installer, download from a Mac that is using macOS Sierra 10.12.5 or later or El Capitan 10.11.6. Enterprise administrators, please download from Apple, not a locally hosted software-update server.
• macOS Sierra downloads as a disk image that contains a file named InstallOS.pkg. Open this file and follow the onscreen instructions. It installs an app named Install macOS Sierra into your Applications folder.
• OS X El Capitan downloads as a disk image that contains a file named InstallMacOSX.pkg. Open this file and follow the onscreen instructions. It installs an app named Install OS X El Capitan into your Applications folder.

Use the 'createinstallmedia' command in Terminal

1. Connect the USB flash drive or other volume that you're using for the bootable installer. Make sure that it has at least 12GB of available storage and is formatted as Mac OS Extended.
2. Open Terminal, which is in the Utilities folder of your Applications folder.
3. Type or paste one of the following commands in Terminal. These assume that the installer is still in your Applications folder, and MyVolume is the name of the USB flash drive or other volume you're using. If it has a different name, replace MyVolume in these commands with the name of your volume.
   Catalina:*
   Mojave:*
   
   High Sierra:*
   Sierra:
   El Capitan:
   
4. Press Return after typing the command.
5. When prompted, type your administrator password and press Return again. Terminal doesn't show any characters as you type your password.
6. When prompted, type Y to confirm that you want to erase the volume, then press Return. Terminal shows the progress as the bootable installer is created.
7. When Terminal says that it's done, the volume will have the same name as the installer you downloaded, such as Install macOS Catalina. You can now quit Terminal and eject the volume.

Download Installesd.dmg

* If your Mac is using macOS Sierra or earlier, include the --applicationpath argument, similar to the way this argument is used in the commands for Sierra and El Capitan.

Use the bootable installer

After creating the bootable installer, follow these steps to use it:

1. Plug the bootable installer into a compatible Mac.
2. Use Startup Manager or Startup Disk preferences to select the bootable installer as the startup disk, then start up from it. Your Mac will start up to macOS Recovery.
   Learn about selecting a startup disk, including what to do if your Mac doesn't start up from it.
3. Choose your language, if prompted.
4. A bootable installer doesn't download macOS from the Internet, but it does require the Internet to get information specific to your Mac model, such as firmware updates. If you need to connect to a Wi-Fi network, use the Wi-Fi menu in the menu bar.
5. Select Install macOS (or Install OS X) from the Utilities window, then click Continue and follow the onscreen instructions.

Learn more

For more information about the createinstallmedia command and the arguments that you can use with it, make sure that the macOS installer is in your Applications folder, then enter this path in Terminal:

Catalina:

Mojave:

High Sierra:

Sierra:

What Is Installesd Dmg Partial Mean

El Capitan: