OS X Lion has new Internet Recovery Mode

What’s a new cool feature of Lion you ask? Well, besides all the others out there, one does stand out. Internet Recovery. The OSX Lion software is distributed strictly through the Mac App Store, and new Macs are no longer shipped with a USB Key. Apple does offer the 8GB key to users at a $70 price tag. So what’s the best way to install Lion on that fresh new hard drive you have? Or if your Mac Crashes and you don’t have a backup? Internet Recovery!

Once your new drive is installed, or you want to start with a fresh copy of OSX Lion, just boot up your Mac while holding Command-R. After a couple seconds, you will see a new screen with options for OSX Utilities. On this screen, you can restore your mac from a Time Machine backup, run Disk Utility, and run Safari to get help from Apple’s Support site. These options can be seen because Lion installs a hidden partition on your drive, which is used during recovery. That’s all well if your drive is in tact, and working fine. But if you replace your drive, then you can do the following:

Once in Recovery Mode, if the computer detects no partition on the drive, it automatically starts Internet Recovery. Internet Recovery downloads and starts the Lion install directly from Apple Servers over an internet connection. Obviously, you need to be on a network or have internet access.

Sounds like Apple has got it under control. Lion so far is amazing, and I can’t wait to keep checking out all the new features! Enjoy your install.

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About the Author

David is a Systems Engineer by day and a Competitive Triathlete on the weekends. He is an avid Apple fan who also loves everything Google. He writes on everything and loves to share news with fellow techies.

2 comments

  1. I installed osx Lion and it went like a breeze. The thing that annoyes me a bit is that i can’t see my window partions (got win7 installed under bootcamp) anymore. While in leopard i could and even drag files between both partitions. Also external hd with ntfs can’t be adressed anymore. I’m using paragon and macfuse but to no prevail. Is it just lion or do i have to adjust some settings?

    txs if you can shed some light on this

    ecl

  2. I installed osx Lion and it went like a breeze. The thing that annoyes me a bit is that i can’t see my window partions (got win7 installed under bootcamp) anymore. While in leopard i could and even drag files between both partitions. Also external hd with ntfs can’t be adressed anymore. I’m using paragon and macfuse but to no prevail. Is it just lion or do i have to adjust some settings?

    txs if you can shed some light on this

    ecl

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