fbifido Posted August 9, 2011 Share Posted August 9, 2011 anyone get the feeling that Apple is trying to consign the optical disc to an early death? The latest Mac Mini comes with no optical drive included, while its latest revision of OS X – Lion – can only be bought pre-loaded or as a 4GB download from the Apple Store. Lion then installs its recovery files to a hidden partition on your hard drive – these files don't include the full Lion installer, which then has to be downloaded again over your wi-fi or wired network. If your hard drive physically fails, then you're covered if you bought your Mac pre-loaded with Lion, as it has built-in capabilities to get online to recover the recovery partition (and subsequently the Lion installer files if you're installing from scratch as opposed to recovering a Time Machine backup). If you bought OS X Lion as an upgrade through the App Store, however, your sole option – until now – was less palatable: install Snow Leopard from the disc, update it to 10.6.8 and then download the whole lot again. Thankfully, Apple has seen the light and realised that this convoluted process is asking too much of upgraders. The end result is this: the Lion Recovery Disk Assistant. It runs on any Mac running OS X Lion with an existing recovery partition – all you then need is a USB disk – hard drive partition or thumb drive – with 1GB free space. Plug it in, launch the utility, pick your chosen drive and click Continue to create the disk. Note that if you want to use the drive for uses other than a pure recovery disk, you'll need to create a 1GB partition on the drive using Disk Utility first – see this Apple KB article for details. Once done, you'll be able to recover Lion to a brand new hard drive without having to go through the whole palaver of installing Snow Leopard first. Once the new, hidden recovery partition has been created the drive is ready for use. Should you ever need it, reboot your Mac with the drive plugged in, then hold down the [Option] key and select Recovery HD from the Startup Manager. You'll then have access to all the usual recovery options: reinstall Lion, Disk Utility, restore from a Time Machine backup and browse the web with Safari. Verdict: An essential download for all Mac OS X Lion upgraders who want a recovery option that doesn't involve reinstalling and updating Snow Leopard first. links: http://www.downloadcrew.com/article/24118-..._disk_assistant OS X Lion: About Lion Recovery Disk Assistant: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4848 Lion Recovery Disk Assistant: http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1433 http://www.apple.com/macosx/recovery/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
smartie77 Posted August 10, 2011 Share Posted August 10, 2011 anyone get the feeling that Apple is trying to consign the optical disc to an early death? The latest Mac Mini comes with no optical drive included, while its latest revision of OS X – Lion – can only be bought pre-loaded or as a 4GB download from the Apple Store. Lion then installs its recovery files to a hidden partition on your hard drive – these files don't include the full Lion installer, which then has to be downloaded again over your wi-fi or wired network. If your hard drive physically fails, then you're covered if you bought your Mac pre-loaded with Lion, as it has built-in capabilities to get online to recover the recovery partition (and subsequently the Lion installer files if you're installing from scratch as opposed to recovering a Time Machine backup). If you bought OS X Lion as an upgrade through the App Store, however, your sole option – until now – was less palatable: install Snow Leopard from the disc, update it to 10.6.8 and then download the whole lot again. Thankfully, Apple has seen the light and realised that this convoluted process is asking too much of upgraders. The end result is this: the Lion Recovery Disk Assistant. It runs on any Mac running OS X Lion with an existing recovery partition – all you then need is a USB disk – hard drive partition or thumb drive – with 1GB free space. Plug it in, launch the utility, pick your chosen drive and click Continue to create the disk. Note that if you want to use the drive for uses other than a pure recovery disk, you'll need to create a 1GB partition on the drive using Disk Utility first – see this Apple KB article for details. Once done, you'll be able to recover Lion to a brand new hard drive without having to go through the whole palaver of installing Snow Leopard first. Once the new, hidden recovery partition has been created the drive is ready for use. Should you ever need it, reboot your Mac with the drive plugged in, then hold down the [Option] key and select Recovery HD from the Startup Manager. You'll then have access to all the usual recovery options: reinstall Lion, Disk Utility, restore from a Time Machine backup and browse the web with Safari. Verdict: An essential download for all Mac OS X Lion upgraders who want a recovery option that doesn't involve reinstalling and updating Snow Leopard first. links: http://www.downloadcrew.com/article/24118-..._disk_assistant OS X Lion: About Lion Recovery Disk Assistant: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4848 Lion Recovery Disk Assistant: http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1433 http://www.apple.com/macosx/recovery/ that tool is {censored}. It still does not create a fully USB installer. Apple is overcomplicating things for their customers. In the meantime a lot of manuals,howtos,apple-scripts,apps are on the net that helps people turning the downloaded "Install Mac OS X Lion.app" into a traditional DVD or USB drive. We as hackintoshers know best how to do it and how to have a fully working none-Internet based offline solution. So : there is no technical reason why all the heck and confusion for normal mac users. It can be done by hackers, so it can be done by Apple even easier. Obviously Apple wants to prevent people from reinstalling to often. And the "no problem, just re-download it" is just insane. Has almighty Steve forgotten that there are lots of users out that are still on Modems,ISDN or pay per minute ? .. Sometimes Apple is a bit too much "ahead" .. at least for all those "normal" Mac Users that do not read "geek" sites. They will go to Apple Stores and will be told marketing blahblah or Apple will sell them a USB drive for a ridiculous amount of money for something that could be made at home for 10 euro.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alessandro17 Posted August 10, 2011 Share Posted August 10, 2011 If you bought OS X Lion as an upgrade through the App Store, however, your sole option – until now – was less palatable: install Snow Leopard from the disc, update it to 10.6.8 and then download the whole lot again. That is absolutely not true. When I bought Lion as an upgrade I created both a backup of the installer and a bootable DVD from InstallESD.dmg. My upgrade from SL to Lion went wrong, because it corrupted my filesystem beyond recovery. So I performed a Lion fresh install from the bootable DVD I had created. Everything fine. Obviously the bootable DVD contains all recovery options as well. It is only slow to boot, which is normal for an OS X install DVD. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BuXb Posted August 15, 2011 Share Posted August 15, 2011 a pro/ con recovery vs. full would be nice. One pro of the 1GB rec. is obvious - less space consumption. But what's missing, compared to the full installer? What are the limitations of the rec. partition version? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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