OS X Lion Can Be Clean Installed At Boot-Up, No Snow Leopard Required

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Lion-recovery-options

Apple’s upcoming OS X Lion release is expected to launch tomorrow, and when it does, it will be available exclusively through the Mac App Store. That means you’ll no longer be able to walk into an Apple retail store and purchase the release on DVD.

That’s great for the environment, but it can make recovering your machine a little more difficult. Apple’s new recovery plans for Lion, however, could make the whole process a walk in the park.

When we first discovered Lion would be available through the Mac App Store only, it was initially believed that users may have to install Snow Leopard first and then Lion afterwards every time they needed to recover their machine. Thankfully, this won’t be the case.

According to an internal AppleCare manual leaked to 9to5 Mac, Lion boasts a number of recovery options that can be initiated by holding Command-R on startup. Users will then have the option to restore their system from a Time Machine backup, run Disk Utility to check, repair or erase partitions on your hard drives, and “reinstall Lion over the Internet from Apple’s servers.”

This should give users the ability to install Lion straight onto their machine without having to access the Mac App Store first, and will make the whole process of recovering your machine a lot easier than originally anticipated.

That sounds a lot better, doesn’t it?

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