How To Make a OS X Lion Boot Disk

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The first question that popped into my head after it was revealed that Lion would be a download only upgrade was "what if I need a boot disk?"

I've had too many hard drives crash, and had to reinstall too many operating systems to do without a physical boot disk. Plus I've never been one to tote around an external bootable hard drive. Thankfully creating a Lion boot disk is quite painless.

Egg Freckles posted the following instructions earlier today.

1. Purchase and download Lion from the Mac App Store on any Lion compatible Mac running Snow Leopard.
2. Right click on “Mac OS X Lion” installer and choose the option to “Show Package Contents.”
3. Inside the Contents folder that appears you will find a SharedSupport folder and inside the SharedSupport folder you will find the “InstallESD.dmg.” This is the Lion boot disc image we have all been waiting for.
4. Copy “InstallESD.dmg” to another folder like the Desktop.
5. Launch Disk Utility and click the burn button.
6. Select the copied “InstallESD.dmg” as the image to burn, insert a standard sized 4.7 GB DVD, and wait for your new Lion Boot Disc to come out toasty hot.

Now you know how to make your very own OS X Lion boot disk once Lion is available. You will be able install it on any of your Lion compatible Mac's like you did before the digital download revolution. And for the Macbook Air or Mac Mini server, which lack an optical drive, users can utilize Disk Utility's Restore function to image the Lion boot disc onto an external drive to perform a clean install.

Unless you've got an early build of Lion, bookmark these instructions, copy them, or store them away in your photographic memory for future use when Lion is available next month