Installing Lion on Upgraded HD for New MBP i7

[peeech]

I have just purchased a new 13", mid-2012, MBP, which comes with Mountain Lion installed on the HD.

I shall be installing a larger and faster new internal 2.5" HD and also upgrade the RAM to its full capacity of 16GB before I place the new MBP i7 in operation.

When I install the new HD, I want to format it with Lion because there are 3 other Macs in my household running 10.7.5, including my old MBP. I do have a bootable thumb drive with 10.7.2 as the "Install ESD," which has taken the place of the old bootable DVD.

I have a 2.5" HD enclosure that could take the new drive. Should I go ahead and format it with Lion before installing it in the new MBP via the USB 3.0 enclosure, or should I install the new HD first and then install the OS from the thumb drive?

I also plan to use Migration Assistant to xfer apps, etc., from the old MBP to the new one.

Any suggestions from you on doing the OS installation the proper way would be very appreciated.

I use the term "proper way" because I've already gone to Apple help, which was a disaster. The tech tried to talk me out of "downgrading" because the "firmware may not accept" the older OS." I really don't know what he was talking about unless he was preaching to me from the gospel of Apple.

However, on doing a google on the subject, I've found where Mac owners have successfully downgraded their OS albeit through several different ways. So, being just more than slightly confused on this is why I come to you.

Thanks for your help,

Peeech

 

[oldscribe]

Hi and welcome.

Any suggestions from you on doing the OS installation the proper way would be very appreciated.

Download Lion from the App store to another Mac in the house, then right-click the Lion installer application and select "Show Package Contents". Navigate to SharedSupport/InstallESD.dmg. Burn this image to a disc using Disk Utility, and you can use to clean install Lion on any system.

Personally I would not downgrade your OS X, and in truth can not see why you acutely need to do this. I would go in the opposite direction and upgrade to Mavericks.

 

[Kaveman]

You may find the new hardware won't run the old OS, they do take stuff out take care!

 

[Cory Cooper]

If it is indeed a MacBook Pro (13-inch, Mid 2012), then the original OS was 10.7.4 Lion. Shouldn't be a problem as far as firmware.

There is a firmware update (MacBook Pro EFI Firmware Update 2.9) for that model:

http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1593

If you bought it new, it should already be up-to-date.

You could put the new HD in the external enclosure, install Lion onto it, apply all the updates, then do a migration from the current HD via Migration Assistant. That would be the easiest way to get all your data to the new HD. You could then simply swap the HDs and be up and running.

C

 

[peeech]

Thanks for all your replies. Cory's response reinforced a thought I'd had. And that was the first "ivy-bridge" MBPs i7 (mid-2012), which my new one is and which has the two USB 3.0 ports, used either OS X 10.7.4 or 10.7.5.

What I did was to put the replacement HD I'm going to use in the external enclosure and successfully installed 10.7.5 from the flash drive using the procedure from the following link. I followed the steps implicitly.

http://www.macworld.com/ article/1165337/create_a_ bootable_lion_install_drive_ for_newer_macs.html

That procedure could possibly be used to prepare bootable flash drives for ML and the new Mavericks since they are based on the same diskless recovery system that began with Lion.

I just haven't had the time to change out the HDs yet to see if the new MBP works w/o problems with 10.7.5. If it does, I shall use Migration Assistant to xfer apps, files, whatever to it.

When I find time to take the back off the new MBP, exchange HDs, and see what happens, I'll then let you know.