Booting Lion Recovery Assistant From Thumb Drive

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Level 1

43 points

Booting Lion Recovery Assistant From Thumb Drive

I'm wondering if I can boot the Lion "Recovery Disk Assitant" from a USB thumb drive with an early 2008 MacBook Pro with an installed but unformatted hard drive. I do have a Time Machine backup to finish the job. I'm not sure the laptop's firmware will allow a USB boot up with the thumb drive. Does anyone know if that should be a problem? I'm assuming the "Recovery Disk Assistant" would take care of the formatting and get me started. The old hard drive is working but I need more capacity. I want the new drive to have the recovery partition so I am concerned about losing it if I were to clone the old hard drive which also has a cloned bootcamp partition. I would rather be sure by letting the new Lion installation take care of partioning issues.

Posted on Apr 8, 2012 11:56 AM

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Answer 1

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georosejr Author

Level 1

43 points

Apr 10, 2012 11:00 AM in response to georosejr

I think it might work from what I have read on this forum. I am going to go ahead and take a chance with this method of reinstalling. Since there doesn't appear to be any interest or knowledge about this method, I will leave this subject for the archives of the "unknown".

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Answer 2

jsd2

Level 5

6,245 points

Apr 10, 2012 12:44 PM in response to georosejr

If you were running Lion 10.7.2 or 10.7.3 and have a complete Time Machine backup on a locally-connected external drive, then you might be able to boot into Lion Recovery directly from the Time Machine backup. This is a new feature.

This support article:

About the OS X Lion v10.7.2 Update

support.apple.com/kb/HT4767

includes:

--------------------------

The OS X Lion v10.7.2 Update includes Safari 5.1.1 as well as fixes that:

.

Enable booting into Lion Recovery from a locally connected Time Machine backup drive.

.

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I don't know further details.

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Answer 3

georosejr Author

Level 1

43 points

Apr 10, 2012 12:56 PM in response to jsd2

Wow! I had no idea my time Machine backup might contain the recovery software to format and load Lion. I will give that a try before using the thumb drive option. I just hope the new, unformatted drive that is installed will not interfere with any boot sequence that will prevent my external drive from doing the work. My external drive has the GUID partition scheme but has three separate partions for Time Machine, HFS +, and NTFS. It has worked well for the past couple of years.

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Answer 4

HACKINT0SH

Level 5

5,804 points

Apr 10, 2012 4:08 PM in response to georosejr

Thumb-drives are out-dated technology. Everyone uses Internet Lion Recovery now 😝

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Answer 5

jsd2

Level 5

6,245 points

Apr 10, 2012 5:04 PM in response to HACKINT0SH

The OP has a 2008 MBP, which is not new enough for this.

Lion Internet recovery in the absence of a recovery partition on disk has to be done via the Mac's firmware. All new Macs have this capability, and there are EFI firmware updates available for a number 2010 and 2011 Macs, but there is no such EFI firmware update available for a 2008 MBP.

from

Computers that can be upgraded to use Lion Internet Recovery

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MacBook Pro (13-inch, Early 2011)

MacBook Pro (15-inch, Early 2011)

MacBook Pro (17-inch, Early 2011)

iMac (21.5-inch, Mid 2011)

iMac (27-inch, Mid 2011)

MacBook (13-inch, Mid 2010)

MacBook Pro (13-inch, Mid 2010)

Mac mini (Mid 2010)

MacBook Pro (15-inch and 17-inch, Mid 2010)

iMac (21.5-inch and 27-inch, Mid 2010)

MacBook Air (11-inch and 13-inch, Late 2010)

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Answer 6

georosejr Author

Level 1

43 points

Apr 11, 2012 11:55 PM in response to georosejr

I believe the Time Machine method will work fine. I started by holding the option key and choosing the Time Machine Partition choice. Clicking on Time Machin offered me the option to install Lion. I assume it will do so with an unformatted intenal drive. I will see what happens in a couple of weeks and reply here. Oops, I think I gave credit to myself rather than jsd2 for helping me out.

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