OS X Lion: About Lion Recovery

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About Lion Recovery

Recovery HD

OS X Lion includes a built in set of utilities in the Recovery HD. Restart your Mac and hold down the Command key and the R key (Command-R), and keep holding them until the Apple icon appears, indicating that your Mac is starting up. After the Recovery HD is finished starting up, you should see a desktop with a Mac OS X menu bar and a "Mac OS X Utilities" application window. Note: If you see a login window or your own desktop and icons, it is possible that you didn't hold Command-R early enough. Restart and try again.

In order to reinstall OS X Lion, you will need to be connected to an Ethernet or Wi-Fi network. The Wi-Fi menu item is in the upper-right corner of the screen. Click the icon to display all available Wi-Fi networks. Click your preferred network name and, if needed, enter a username and/or password. 

Lion Internet Recovery

If you happen to encounter a situation in which you cannot start from the Recovery HD, such as your hard drive stopped responding or you installed a new hard drive without Mac OS X installed, new Mac models introduced after public availability of OS X Lion automatically use the Lion Internet Recovery feature if the Recovery HD (Command-R method above) doesn't work. Lion Internet Recovery lets you start your Mac directly from Apple's Servers. The system runs a quick test of your memory and hard drive to ensure there are no hardware issues.

Lion Internet Recovery presents a limited interface at first, with only the ability to select your preferred Wi-Fi network and, if needed, enter the WPA passphrase. Next, Lion Internet Recovery will download and start from a Recovery HD image. From there, you are offered all the same utilities and functions described above.

As with the Recovery HD, reinstallation of OS X Lion from Lion Internet Recovery requires an Internet connection. See "Supported network configurations and protocols" below. 

Some computers that did not ship with OS X Lion installed may have a software update available that allows them to use Lion Internet Recovery.

Restoring iLife applications after Internet Restore of OS X Lion

If you reinstall Lion on a new Mac that shipped with OS X Lion installed, on an erased or replaced hard drive, you can download iPhoto, iMovie, and GarageBand from the Mac App Store. 

1. After installation, start from Lion.
2. Double-click the App Store icon in the dock.
3. Enter your Apple ID and password.
4. Click Purchases.
5. If you haven't previously accepted your bundled iLife applications within the Mac App Store, you should see your iLife applications appear in the Accept portion of the screen. Click Accept.
6. You may be asked for your Apple ID and password once again. Your iLife applications now move to the Purchased section. These applications are part of the software that came with your Lion based computer. Your account will not be charged for them. Click Install to compete installation of your applications.

Requirements for reinstalling OS X Lion

Reinstalling OS X Lion via Lion Recovery requires broadband access to the Internet via Wi-Fi or an Ethernet connection. OS X Lion is downloaded over the Internet from Apple when Lion Recovery is used for reinstallation.

Lion Recovery requires that DHCP be enabled on your chosen Wi-Fi or ethernet network, If you bought Lion from the Mac App Store, you will be prompted to enter the Apple ID and password you used to purchase Lion.

The OS X Lion download is about 4 GB large; the time required to download will vary, depending on the speed of your Internet connection. If your usual or current Internet connection has requirements or settings not supported by Lion Restore, either change the settings to a supported configuration for the duration of your OS X Lion reinstall, or seek out acceptable networks from which you are permitted to access the Internet (such as friends, family, Internet "cafe" establishments, or possibly your place of employment with appropriate permission).

Supported network configurations and protocols

What to do if the installer warns that no Recovery HD can be created

Some disk partition configurations may result in the OS X Lion installer reporting that it could not create a Recovery HD. In these situations, even if you are permitted to continue the install, you should quit the install and create an external, bootable OS X Lion hard drive with a Recovery HD, first. You will be able to return to the upgrade to OS X Lion on your computer's boot drive after creating the external Recovery HD.

Important notes

• Your storage device must have at least 13 GB available (after formatting) to install Lion and an Internet Restore partition.
• These steps will erase and reformat the storage device. This article will instruct you on setting up the storage device to use the GUID partition scheme and the Mac OS Extended (Journaled) format, which are required to install Lion and an Internet Restore partition on your external storage device. You should back up any important files that are on the device to a different drive.
• This procedure will install a version of the OS X Lion that is compatible with the Mac it was created with. Using this Lion system with a different kind of Mac may produce unpredictable results.
• Your computer's serial number will be sent to Apple to help authenticate your request to download and install OS X Lion.
   

Installing Lion on an external storage device

Use these steps to install Lion from your Mac to a different internal hard drive or to an external USB, FireWire, SDHC or SDXC card, or a Thunderbolt storage device.

Important: This will erase the storage device. A storage device that is already formatted to support Windows (formatted for FAT or NTFS file systems) will be reformatted. You should back up any important files that are on the device to a different drive.

1. Attach a USB, FireWire, or Thunderbolt storage device to your computer, or insert an SDHC or SDXC card into the SD card slot if your Mac has one.
2. Launch Disk Utility, from the /Applications/Utilities folder, then click Continue.

Erase and reformat the storage device

1. Click the attached storage device where it indicates it's size in GB.
2. Click the Partition tab.
3. Select "1 Partition" from the Partition Layout pop-up menu.
4. Click Options. Note: Do not select more than one partition.

5. Click the GUID Partition Table radio button, then click OK.

6. In the format field, select Mac OS Extended (Journaled).
   
    
7. Click Apply.
8. Enter a name for the drive in the Name field.
9. Verify that you wish to erase and reformat the selected drive by clicking Partition.
10. After the reformatting process is finished, choose Quit Disk Utility from the Disk Utility menu.

Install OS X Lion

If you completed your installation of OS X Lion, your installer may have been removed after your successful first login to OS X Lion. Mac App Store's Purchases page should show Install Mac OS X Lion as being "Installed", and disallow its download, when viewed from a computer running OS X Lion.

To redownload the installer on a computer running OS X Lion, press and hold the Option key while you click the Purchases tab. If the button to the right of the Install Mac OS X Lion item doesn't change to "Install" and allow you to download Lion, use Spotlight to search for "Install Mac OS X Lion" on your computer. 

1. Launch the Install Mac OS X Lion installer you downloaded from Mac App Store. The installer should be in the /Applications folder.
2. Follow the onscreen instructions to complete the Lion installation. Be sure you install Lion on the external storage device you've connected for this purpose, not your computer's boot drive.
3. When installation to your external device is complete, you can re-run Install Mac OS X Lion installer and upgrade the boot drive of your computer. A Recovery HD will likely not be created, but if you need to reinstall or repair your boot drive at a later date, you can connect the external drive you just prepared and hold Command-R while restarting computer in order to boot from the external Recovery HD.

Please note that Recovery HD must be present on your computer's startup volume to use FileVault 2 (not an external Recovery HD).