downgrade from Mavericks to lion on retina macbook without any backups

This was the best answer I thought. I have a new 2013 MBA and after installing Mavricks massive issues with battery drain due to the fan running constantly for long periods of time. The icons started acting funny, my remot login capabilities via logmein didn't work,

I'm also experiencing the same issues on my 24" iMac. Really disappointed that they released Mavricks with so many issues and problems. I thought since my iMac was a early 2009 model so it might night have all the juice required but when the new MBA acted really screwy I knew it was time to revert back to mountain lion until they figure out the issues.

Only thing to add is once you erase everything, use the command plus R combo again to get into internet recovery mode. Then you will get the option of reinstalling Mountain Lion.

If you downloaded mavericks from appstore , it will replace recovery hd by 10.9

so i can't restore now by internet recovery because i will restore mavericks

what can I do?

This is how i did it.

First i made i TM of my mavericks machine.

Had a previous TM of Mountain Lion on a different disk.

Restored to ML using timemachine.

Then used Migration assistant to copy over all my files from the Mavericks TM i just did to Mountain Lion.

Worked like a charm. Hope this help anyone

FYI: i rollbacked just because i noticed using usb<dvi adapters caused serious flickering issues in Mavericks, very unfortunate cause i really enjoyed it. Will wait for apple to adress these issues.

I divided my drive into 2: one is the setup drive (with all system files, applications, etc.) abd one is for my documents, movies, photos, music... So if i choose to erase, will it erase only the setup drive or both? Will my documents be affected? Do I need to backup all my data or just leave it in that second drive?

Thanks alot.

Btw, I love Mavericks in general but my iMac needs at least 30 mins to startup :((

My MBP had come with Lion. I recently 'upgraded' to Mavericks from there, like the original poster. Now that I regret this, I do not see the option for internet recovery and the only option offered after cmd+R is Mavericks reinstall. My machine seems to be one of the last shipping with Lion, so the EFI update does not the trick. I wouldn't mind a fresh reinstall, but how could I source the Lion install DVD?

PS Have just read Dj_Tap's remarks. Does it necessarily mean I have to erase the disk before I can get the internet recovery and Lion options?

Thanks man