How can I install an SSD on my new Lion MBP w/out install disks?

I just got a new MBP that came with Lion, and they didn't give me any install disks. If I swap in my new SSD, how can I install Lion on the new drive?

Update: There is the Mac OS X Utilities that I can get to by holding Command+R during a restart, which has options to install Lion and/or erase/fix a disk. Additionally, the instruction manual I received gives instructions on how to replace the computer's hard drive, so it seems that Apple would account for setting up the new drive without a install-disk. I missed the UPS delivery of my new SSD, so will have to wait until Monday, at which time I'll swap the drives, and see if this built-in utility works. If not, I'll follow people's advice on mirroring the old disk over. Will reply back with result

Update 2: Installed SSD, and of course it doesn't let me get access to the OS X Utilities (i.e. via Command+R). This must be another partition on the drive. I'm going to try mirroring the two drives. A curse upon all these screws I have re-remove

Solution 1:

The recovery partition on your original disk was the only supported method until the Recovery Disk Assistant was made available.

The bulk of this answer was written before the official steps were published - so I would recommend the Recovery Disk Assistant even though HT4718 steps help understand what is happening under the hood.

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4718

The easiest is to get a drive enclosure or adapter and re-run the Lion installer from the Recovery HD and install Lion onto the new SSD.

It likely won't matter if the drive with the recovery HD is on an external bus or an internal bus, but I would keep the original drive inside the mac until you have Lion installed on your SSD connected to an external port.

Boot off the SSD to test it and run migration from the internal drive to the SSD before doing swapping the drives inside your mac.

It still boggles my mind that any mac will ship without some sort of reinstall media. Look in the center of the box, under where the mac sat. Call apple if your media is missing so they can ship it to you or point out how they want you to reinstall the OS on a new drive. Your mac's hard drive is listed as a consumer replaceable part, so they have to provide you with the steps to do that.

Solution 2:

If you have one of the newest Macs (The most recently released Mac Mini or MacBook Air, and in the future all new Mac models) you can install Lion over the Internet by net booting from Apple's servers.

See Apple's Lion Recovery page.

If your Mac problem is a little less common — your hard drive has failed or you’ve installed a hard drive without OS X, for example — Internet Recovery takes over automatically. It downloads and starts Lion Recovery directly from Apple servers over a broadband Internet connection. And your Mac has access to the same Lion Recovery features online. Internet Recovery is built into every newly-released Mac starting with the Mac mini and MacBook Air.

This will work for all Macs with firmware 1.7

Solution 3:

Your best option is probably to get a hard drive dock or enclosure that you can use to plug the SSD in as an external drive. Then use SuperDuper or something similar to clone the HDD's contents to the SSD. Then swap the drives and boot as normal.

I did this to put an SSD into my early 2009 17" MacBook Pro with Snow Leopard and it worked fine. The only caveat is that it might interact strangely with Lion's recovery partition. Best to test that before you reclaim your slow HDD for mass storage.

The dock I use is a Newertech Voyager Q. It's a bit expensive if this is all you need it for, but it's super handy for swapping out drives if you have high storage requirements or if you have a solid backup regimen. You also might get a small USB enclosure, which will be cheaper, and which will allow you to stick the slow HDD you're removing into it to use for mass storage from then on.

Solution 4:

Got the new Crucial M4 512GB, cloned original MACBOOK Pro (late 2011) drive using a SATA to USB connection and Carbon Copy Cloner. Removed the hard disk and installed the SSD in the drive bay. Ever so happy afterwards. Yet to put the original drive in to a caddy, waiting for Thunderbolt caddies to come out! :)