How to do a Clean install of Lion OSX – Nuke and Pave

Lion There are many of us Mac users that like to do the Nuke and Pave when there is a major upgrade to our favourite operating system. It is a time to clean out the cruft and lose some of the applications that arrived on the scene only to be tested a few time and not used again. So when a different cat comes along it is time for us to do the clean install. But with the news that came form WWDC this year I am sure that there are many wondering how this clean install is going to be possible. When the download has to come in through the Mac App Store how can we get the old off first and start fresh.

I have already heard unconfirmed reports of there being a way that will let us somehow do the Nuke and Pave that we feel is necessary. I will be wanting to do the New with OSX Lion myself. The ideas that people have so far are only guesswork until the Lion becomes available and the work arounds are used and assessed for how well they work.

One Way we can do a Clean Install guaranteed to work

In the mean time I would like to suggest that one way we can do it anyway is to do a restore using the SnowLeopard disks we have in our hands already. Do all the back ups first of course. Time Machine and another using Super Duper and see that all of the data from the applications, your documents are safe. Then wipe the disk and re install Snow Leopard.

Then make sure you have the latest version of Snow Leopard and you can decide whether you want to install apps that you have bought and want to continue using before you get Lion on there or afterwards. After could be good but it might not make much difference in the long run. What might be a great idea would be to make a back up on a spare disk of the clean install when it is all done and before you do anything else to keep as a long term back up. Then if ever you want to go to the clean install again you have it there and ready with all the basic applications you use all ready to go.

Lion

Wait and See Time for Lion OSX

There will almost certainly be a way to get the DMG from the installer package and to make a DVD from it so that you can do the wipe clean of the internal hard disk when the time comes. But at least for now you can see that we do have one option that is sure to work.

If this is the only way then I can see that in three cats time, we will be a bit miffed at having to go back to a Snow Leopard DVD to do the Nuke and Pave unless Apple perfects the upgrade technology sufficiently so that we won’t want to do a Nuke and Pave.