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Lion Recovery restores Mac system software without drives (Updated)

by Erica Sadun Jul 20th 2011 at 11:25AM

Today, Apple introduced Lion Recovery as part of its OS X Lion distribution. Built into Lion, Recovery allows you to get your Mac back up and running after a catastrophic failure. By holding down Command-R during startup, Lion automatically boots from its recovery partition rather than its primary day-to-day partition.

The recovery partition allows you to run Disk Utility, to erase your primary drive, re-install a fresh copy of Lion or restore from Time Machine. It also offers a built-in Safari web browser so you can search for help information online before applying the recovery tools.

Lion Recovery can handle hard drive failures as well using a feature called Internet Recovery. Built into new Macs, including the newly released mini and MacBook Air, this new hardware feature will download and start Lion Recovery over any available broadband connection.

Mac OS X has long had the ability to boot from a remote disk image via NetBoot, and restore the operating system via NetInstall (both based on the legacy bootp protocol, long present in NextStep and BSD). It looks like the new Macs extend NetBoot to the wide, wide Internet -- but Apple's write-up is pretty lean for the moment.

Lion Recovery and Internet Recovery make physical install discs and dongles obsolete, allowing computers to restore themselves without having to hunt for extra equipment.

[Updated to clarify that NetBoot is the likely underlying tech.]



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Today, Apple introduced Lion Recovery as part of its OS X Lion distribution. Built into Lion, Recovery allows you to get your Mac back...
 

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Khalil AMAR

@Jim Robinson
"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."

Source: http://www.apple.com/macosx/recovery/

July 22 2011 at 3:28 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to Khalil AMAR's comment
Khalil AMAR

Sorry, if you can delete this one above please

July 22 2011 at 3:29 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Jim Robinson

but what happens when you want to upgrade a drive that is your main internal drive..... no easy way it looks like..

July 20 2011 at 5:33 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to Jim Robinson's comment
Khalil AMAR

@Jim Robinson
"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."

Source: http://www.apple.com/macosx/recovery/

July 22 2011 at 3:28 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Cowicide

> Lion Recovery and Internet Recovery make physical install discs and dongles obsolete

Um, that's corporate FUD. In the real world, not all of us have access to Internet that can download a bootable DVD in the time it takes to pull one out of my laptop bag. TUAW... fail.... what world do YOU live in??

July 20 2011 at 2:47 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
2 replies to Cowicide's comment
puhsitch

A little bold, maybe, but I don't think there's any FUD hiding in there.

July 20 2011 at 4:16 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
VanillaSpice

You do understand that Lion Recovery does not require the internet ... right?

The Internet Recovery feature is only for when your hard drives have crashed. If the hard drives are fine, then you can restore from the recovery partition using Lion Recovery, and all it takes is holding down command-R which YES is quicker than you pulling a bootable DVD out of your laptop bag.

PS I am living in a world where we read and comprehend before we shoot off our mouth. It's nice here. It's civil.

July 20 2011 at 11:34 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to VanillaSpice's comment
Ryan

Not for when hard drives crash, for when hard drives are upgraded, partition maps change, etc. And if I don't have one of these "new Macs, including the newly released mini and MacBook Air" what am I to do? If I could have made a USB recovery dongle I wouldn't need to reinstall Snow Leopard and then upgrade it to Lion.

I agree the recovery partition is nice, but I've managed a network of over 400 Macs and I can say that discs are important. While the recovery partition is great, the user isn't empowered by not being able to write it to a USB drive. This is just an example of choice being taken away from the user. Are we getting closer to the walled garden of iOS on the desktop? I hope not.

July 28 2011 at 9:12 AM Report abuse -1 rate up rate down
Ed

How does it handle multiple existing partitions? Does it not care if you have more than one and knows to properly restore the system one leaving the other(s) alone?

July 20 2011 at 12:27 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
pwrmacgod

You can always make a bootable USB stick. I've done that since 10.5 was introduced. By doing this, you get faster install times, quicker 'diagnostic' boot up times and you don't have to worry about scratching a disc.
(to which I've always been paranoid about happening).

You can, with a little legwork, get Lion onto a bootable USB stick as well.

Never take the status quo, experiment, succeed - enjoy.

July 20 2011 at 11:53 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to pwrmacgod's comment
Cowicide

I just wish Apple would make that available for the common folk so "it just works". I don't understand why we have to jump through hoops to make a bootable USB stick. Apple should sell them or at least a utility to make them with one-click.

July 20 2011 at 2:50 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to Cowicide's comment
Khalil AMAR

Mac OS X Lion USB Thumb Drive For $69 in August

July 22 2011 at 3:30 PM Report abuse rate up rate down
Andrew

That sounds great, but as of right now, aren't all Macs out of luck without a physical disc if the drive fails?

July 20 2011 at 11:45 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Zippo

I guess users of "legacy" Macs like my 2010 Macbook Pro will still have create a bootable copy of the Lion installer - just in case the worst happens and my harddrive completely explodes.

July 20 2011 at 11:38 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
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