
You may probably know that Apple, Inc. began selling OS X Lion USB Thumb Drive, a USB install drive for Mac OS X Lion, several days ago. Apple Store currently sells it for US$69.00. You may have also heard that you can actually create your own USB install drive saving some 20 to 30 bucks, provided that you have a Lion installation disk from Mac App Store.

Screenshot 1 – Source: MacHouse |
A question that I had a few days ago is “Can I use my SDHC card to create a Lion install drive?” These days, I don’t use USB memory sticks. Rather, I have quite a lot of SDHC and Compact Flash cards. As you know, all new iMacs, which Apple, Inc. introduced in early May, come with an SD card slot. Maybe, create a Lion install card and plug it into this slot to start up an iMac? I was a bit skeptical. But I had to try it. So I just bought a new iMac 27″ Quad Core 3.1 GHz plus a SDHC card yesterday. Actually, it arrived this morning.
An SDHC card that I was going to use is Silicon Power 4 GB (Class 10) SDHC card. I’ve bought one just for this attempt. I was going to use it, but I didn’t. That’s because this card doesn’t have sufficient capacity. 4 GB isn’t enough. So, instead, I ended up using an existing Transcend 8 GB (Class 6) SDHC card. Well, I didn’t have to buy a new 4 GB SDHC card after all. But that’s all right. Furthermore, since I’m a member of Mac Developer Program, I get a free copy of OS X Lion installation disk. And I have a copy sitting on my external hard drive. Continue reading →