On Monday Apple released a new utility called the Lion Recovery Disk Assistant. The new utility is designed to help Mac users running Mac OS X Lion get up and running again if they encounter problems with their boot drive.
Although this is a step in the right direction it still doesn’t resolve the concerns people have about having the entire Mac OS X Lion operating system on media that you can reinstall it from.
The new utility was announced via this Apple knowledge base article https://support.apple.com/kb/DL1433 and according to Apple:
About Lion Recovery Disk Assistant
Built right into OS X Lion, Lion Recovery lets you repair disks or reinstall OS X Lion without the need for a physical disc.
The 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.
Note: In order to create an external Lion Recovery using the Lion Recovery Assistant, the Mac must have an existing Recovery HD.
To create an external Lion Recovery, download the Lion Recovery Disk Assistant application. Insert an external drive, launch the Lion Recovery Disk Assistant, select the drive where you would like to install, and follow the on screen instructions.
When the Lion Recovery Disk Assistant completes, the new partition will not be visible in the Finder or Disk Utility. To access Lion Recovery, reboot the computer while holding the Option key. Select Recovery HD from the Startup Manager.
For detailed information on this update, please visit: About Lion Recovery Disk Assistant.
If you want a copy of this new utility you can download a copy of it now.
David W. Martin has more than 20 years of experience in the industry as a programmer, systems and business analyst, author, and consultant. David has written for CNET’s iPhoneatlas.com, MacLife.com, CultofMac.com, BYTE.com and recently for aNewDoman.net. He comes to Cult of Mac’s website with deep knowledge and passion for the all things Apple. Follow David on Twitter @david_w_martin or see what he’s up to now at davidwmartin.com.
19 responses to “Apple Releases Lion Recovery Disk Assistant”
why not universal usb to allow to install to any computer? another apple hacK?
i prefer my own lion usb from original installer.
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I just paid $ 23.86 for an iPhone and my girlfriend loves her Dell laptop that we got for $ 38.76 there arriving tomorrow by UPS I will never pay such expensive retail prices in stores again. Especially when I also sold a 42 inch LED TV to my boss for $ 665 which only cost me $ 62,81 to buy. Here is the website we use to get it all from, GrabPenny.com
By all accounts, this *isn’t* the full install package thay gets created on the bootable disk. It’s a copy of the Recovery Partition that Lion creates, and when you run it, you need to connect to the Internet if you’re doing a fresh install (e.g. if you’ve switched the HDD out and want to start from scratch). If you’re looking to restore from Time Capsule, I believe you can do that without having to connect to the Internet, the recovery USB stick should allow that directly….
It’s trivial to create a *.dmg from the installer though. All you need to do is remember to save the *.dmg before you install, or have another computer to start the install on and then save the *.dmg
You probably should have noted that the only reason they are even offering this to customers is because it’s the only fix for the mind-numbingly dumb people who bought brand new MacBook Airs and wanted to *downgrade* to the older OS, which isn’t technically supported on the hardware. It’s a very small group of very particular people that are having problems.
I’m not a big Mac geek, but I managed to make a bootable disk in no time.
There are scenarios to use this other than downgraded Airs.
Hard drive failure.
Recovery partition accidentally deleted during Windows install.
Fresh install on an upgrade to an SSD or a larger hard drive.
Correct it is the base system and not the full Lion installation.
It may be trivial to some, but not to all. What happened to the days of “It Just Works”? Why not release a simple utility (like this one) that allows you to create a full installation stick though a simple wizard, instead of someone having to go through the manual steps?
Apple and Macs are supposed to be about the user experience. What’s so good about having to go to user forums, to find manual instructions prior to downloading the installer, stopping the installation process, and going through a number of manual steps, when it could so easily be added in as a step during the installation process that would be a lot more user friendly and simplified.
My computer actually made this without me doing it. I don’t know how it did it but I have 3 options cause i have bootcamp. “Lion” , “Windows”, “Recovery HD”.