Apple releases Lion Recovery Disk Assistant
While OS X Lion automatically creates a recovery partition on your existing hard drive, many people have correctly pointed out that this does you no good if the hard drive itself fails. While many third-party solutions for creating a Lion recovery disk on an external drive have sprouted up over the past few weeks, there's now an official solution from Apple: Lion Recovery Disk Assistant.
According to Apple, "Lion Recovery Disk Assistant lets you create Lion Recovery on an external drive that has all of the same capabilities as the built-in Lion Recovery: reinstall Lion, repair the disk using Disk Utility, restore from a Time Machine backup, or browse the web with Safari."
The program will walk you through the process of creating a recovery disk on an external USB drive. The assistant notes that the external disk will be erased in the process of creating a recovery disk, however, so if you were hoping to use this solution to create a recovery disk on a drive that's already loaded with other information, you might want to explore other options or find a dedicated drive that you can use instead.
Lion Recovery Disk Assistant is just over 1 megabyte and available for download now.
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While many third-party solutions for creating a Lion recovery disk on an external drive have sprouted up, there's now an official solution from Apple.
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It should also be noted that this can be done on an external HDD partition of 1GB. I just added a 1GB partition to the external HDD that I use for my Time Machine backups and had it created there. That way if my internal HDD is hosed or I decide to install a new one I have everything I need to get up and running again all on one HDD.
August 09 2011 at 7:45 PM Report abuse Permalink +1 rate up rate down ReplyGreat to know, thanks!
August 10 2011 at 11:08 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyIs there a logical reason as to why Apple did not release this in the App Store? Seems that would be the logical place.
August 09 2011 at 1:48 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyOr, you could just use Lion Disk Maker to create an actual Lion installer. Requires a 4GB or larger external USB drive (I used a 4GB Kingston flash drive and it works great):
http://blog.gete.net/lion-diskmaker-us/
+1
Just keep in mind that this will *not* work on the newest Mac mini and MacBook Air models...
Ok so please help me out I downloaded this and wanted to create my boot drive so I try and get this message:
The Recovery HD on this computer is damaged or not present. Recovery Disk Assistant requires a functioning Lion Recovery HD to create an external Lion Recovery.
So does anyone know how to repair or create this partition?
A little background information? What type of computer, how did you install Lion, what build of Lion is on there, etc...
August 09 2011 at 8:12 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyThis does not seem to work with my Firewire 400 disk. Hmm USB only.
August 08 2011 at 9:20 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyThis tends to be popular for Apple tools. However once you make the USB drive, you can clone it to FW and it fully retains its functionality.
August 09 2011 at 8:13 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyIt's stated clearly on the linked page, where it lists the requirements as:
A Mac running OS X Lion with an existing Recovery HD
An external USB hard drive or thumb drive with at least 1GB of free space
Oops, my post was intended to be a reply to Ron Green.
August 08 2011 at 9:14 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyBut how big does the external drive need to be?
August 08 2011 at 8:51 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyThe installation is about 700MB or so, so Apple is saying "1GB or more"... It's not a full installation media, but it does contain a bootable OS.
August 08 2011 at 8:54 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyThis tool is nice, but it doesn't solve the problem of having an offline installation. This tool will allow you to boot from an external drive if your normal startup drive is hosed, but in order to reinstall Mac OS X Lion you still have to download the image from Apple's servers each and every time.
As of now, the only actual offline installer for Lion is by creating an unofficial boot drive with the complete Lion installer image on it. This currently only works on Macs prior to the new 2011 Macbook Air and Mac Mini, and only if you purchased Lion from the App Store.
An official USB key for Lion will ship later in August for $79. That seems to be the only supported method to reinstalling Lion offline. Shame.
"but in order to reinstall Mac OS X Lion you still have to download the image from Apple's servers each and every time."
Not true. I made a USB stick installer using nothing but disk utility, and used it to install on 2 machines. one download, 3 installs.
http://osxdaily.com/2011/07/08/make-a-bootable-mac-os-x-10-7-lion-installer-from-a-usb-flash-drive/
Just a quick clarification: This is a great method for machines prior to the new Mac mini and MacBook Air, but does not work on those new models.
August 09 2011 at 12:31 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate downAlso to note: I already mentioned the fact that you can make an unofficial USB bootable flash drive or DVD. The quote you referred to was talking about what this Apple tool specifically does, and it *does* require you to redownload Lion every single time you use it.
Also to Christo, hopefully that limitation is only temporary. Once Apple updates the Lion image on the App Store, we'll be able to see if the offline method works on the newer machines. I sure hope they do.
I assume a better option would still be to make a bootable DVD or USB drive from the downloaded installer? That way, you can reinstall without having to do the download again. Or does the recovery drive have additional functionality the Lion install disc wouldn't have?
Of course that's irrelevant for Macs shipping with Lion already on it, since you wouldn't have a downloaded installer to make a DVD from.
An actual offline installer would be better. The Lion Recovery is the same, whether it's booted from the startup disk, an offline installer, an internet installer that ships with the new Airs and Minis, or one made using this tool. The difference is where it gets the files from (the internet or local).
As long as it's not one of the new Airs or Minis, you can still purchase Lion from the App Store and create an offline installer for new Macs shipping with Lion. Hopefully the App Store image will get updated with time (makes sense that Apple would), which will allow newer Macs to boot with it as well. Otherwise, you'll have to spring for the $69 USB key that ships later this month for a true offline installer.
Unfortunately, this is not true. The *only* ways to reinstall the new builds is either to boot from the recovery partition *that comes with* the new system, or to use internet recovery. I have confirmed both personally, and with Apple that the recovery images from any 11A511 (which includes MAS) build will *not* download the correct one. Ostensibly, the USB key will also have this problem, but I have a feeling that will change before they're shipped...
August 08 2011 at 7:31 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate downI got my new Mac Mini last Thursday and had to try the built-in recovery option in which one downloads the operating system over the Internet. It worked wonderfully for me, but I'm going to make use of this application to build a USB stick to reinstall the operating system for the future.
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