How to Make OSX Lion Install Disk post-Installation

Hi guys! Before you go ahead and think of helping you, let me very clearly state and tell you that I am not at all in any issue. As a result of which I do not expect a rigorous search and aggressive research for my issue. I am basically this pessimist guy who likes to be safe and prefers not to cry after a problem occurs and this thread is a result of that attitude. I am a new and quite a satisfied user to Mac OS. Lately happened to learn about Lion and was very excited to use it. I did a lot of research on the OS and found it is worth using which again was a result of my pessimist attitude. Talking about the OS, yes I am loving the use for sure but I am worried if something goes wrong then what? So, I want to be on the safer end and I don’t wish to take any risk. I guess, I should be keeping a boot up disk of the OS, for such a situation. I don’t want to run around looking for an ideal solution. I would rather prefer taking the pain of making a boot up disk, preserving it and then reinstalling it rather. I like such pains than mess. Anyways, now the problem I am facing is that I know creating a boot up disk is an option worth consideration or the only option available but I am not sure how to go about it. i.e I don’t know how to create a boot up disk. If anyone could please help me with the same I would more than grateful to that individual. Looking forward for some genuine help and solution to the query.

This is not to be termed as a pessimist attitude, this one of the most ideal attitudes that an individual must rightly possess. Because, when you are dealing with computers, you never know what major and disastrous issue is waiting for you in the very next click or the very next second. It is a very appreciable effort of asking what you are unaware of. Don’t degrade your smartness by giving it a degraded name of pessimism. If everyone could be so careful with the use of their system, trust me there would hardly be any major issue to report in a computer.

Anyways, talking about the issue that you are possibly facing. I am aware of how to go about with the boot up disk development. It is a bit of a finicky task and it requires multiple efforts to attain this. Of course, if you are willing to pay twice, you will not need any option but yeah creating a back up disk after installation on the charge of a single purchase is a bit of a tedious thing to do. I have done that for myself after shedding a decent amount of sweat. Anyways, this is how you go about it:

The basic challenge in this task is that you will need to download the installation file for the second time since it deletes the file once installed. In order to do this, you will need to go to the App Store and select Purchased. This will indicate that Lion is installed. Now move to some other section maybe Featured, then press and hold that option down and click the purchase section again. This process will change Lion’s installed status to install. You will need to do this number of times to get it right. Just don’t lose patience and go ahead. Once this is achieved you can easily create the boot up disk using the standard steps

Thanks a ton! Same with me, buddy have shed hell lot of sweat and was about to post back that I am giving up and I don’t think I’ll be able to do this when I got an urge of trying it one last time and to my surprise it just worked out. I got through it damn easily and I could very easily download it. I mean is it about timing or practice? I am not sure but yeah at the end of the story I won with. But the issue as of now is that I don’t know how to create a boot up of this file. I need assistance in that. Hope you don’t mind

Ok! Why would I mind? I would be more than glad to help you out with it. So, going ahead with it, basically what you were asking for can be done in 2 ways viz; Disk Utility or by using the ‘hdiutil’ and ‘asr’ commands. Initially, we’ll discuss the easier method of using the Disk Utility option of creating the boot up disk. The most ideal way to do it would be to do this from a drive which is not booted at present. It is definitely possible to image an active drive but please make sure that no applications are running and all are closed and there is hardly any use of the hard disk when the process of back up creation is on! This is how we do this:

- You need to start the Disk Utility application which can be located using the path Applications followed by Utilities
- Spot the file menu in the utility window and select the submenu which reads New
- When you click or roll over New, you will get pop ups which has Disk Image from Folder as an option
- You need to spot the drive that is supposed to be imaged and then click on the image button
- You need to provide the disk image that you intend to create, a name which will be permanent
- Go to the sub menu labeled with text: Image Format and from there select the option ‘Compressed’
- Your disk image will then be created, this created image will rightly appear on the left pane in the Disk Utility application
- Go to that image and click once on the image that is available on the left pane
- This action will be selecting the image, then move to the Images menu and select the option ‘Scan Image for Restore’
- In order to restore a disc image that you have created back to the hard drive. Follow the below mentioned steps

o Spot the tab which reads ‘Restore’ and select it.
o You will see the image in the left pane again, simply drag it from there to the Source Box
o On the very same left pane you will also notice the partition where you want to restore it, drag it from there to the destination box
o You should be checking the check boxes next to Erase Destination and Skip Checksum
o In order to complete the process and as a final command to execute the desired action, click on the restore button

I don't understand what the issue is, but somehow things don't look like working. It is not obeying to get the boot up disk creation task done. Is this a severe bug? Do you think there is any malware attack that is causing this? What according to you would be the issue? I noticed you mentioning about some other option of going ahead with the disk creation thing. What is it exactly? How to do that?

No, this is not a malware attack. Relax! This is some system specific error. Because the instructions that I provided worked for my system, maybe your specifications vary anyways, I did mention about an alternate media which is using the ‘hdiutil’ and ‘asr’ commands.

I will definitely help you with it, in order to do this, please go through the below mentioned script which creates a read-to-restore image. The image that will be created will be named as per the date. Only change in the below mentioned script would be to replace ‘extdisk’ to the name of the portion where the image supposed to be saved.

==================begin script==================

hdiutil create -srcfolder / /Volumes/extdisk/server_name_here.dmg
sleep 10
asr -imagescan /Volumes/extdisk/server_name_here.dmg
sleep 10
mv /Volumes/extdisk/backup.dmg /Volumes/extdisk/server_name_here`date +%Y-%m-%d’.dmg

==================end script====================

Another option of creating a back up is to use ‘Cron’. This creates a full disk image back up. As a matter of example, it is possible to create a cron job where a macintosh OS imaging is done at a scheduled time maybe every Thursday at 12:00 Noon. You can edit cron with the below mentioned command lines:

“sudo pico /etc/crontab”