Cleaning house and cleaning out the house.
36 minutes seemed a little too good to be true. How much had Apple honestly reinstalled? I was working from a brand new MacBook Air, so certainly that must have accelerated the process. Booting back into Recovery HD, I opened Disk Utility. I repaired the disk (near-instantaneous) and permissions (4 minutes). So far so good: Everything worked as it would from a disk, only faster.
36 minutes seemed a little too good to be true. How much had Apple honestly reinstalled? I was working from a brand new MacBook Air, so certainly that must have accelerated the process. Booting back into Recovery HD, I opened Disk Utility. I repaired the disk (near-instantaneous) and permissions (4 minutes). So far so good: Everything worked as it would from a disk, only faster.
From here, I decided to reformat the Mac partition and do a fresh reinstall OS X. With no common components the process would have to be slower. Think again. Despite similar ETAs (33 minutes to the download and 38 to install) the end result was just a couple minutes longer than the previous reinstallation (39 minutes real-time). In other words, in the time it takes to watch an episode of Mad Men, I had performed a full installation of OS X over the Internet. Not bad, right?
Lion Internet Recovery, or how I learned to stop caring and love breaking OS X.
With Recovery HD any Lion user can run Disk Utility to clean house—or clean out house—or reinstall OS X from Apple's servers. But Apple has also added a new tool called Lion Internet Recovery for the latest drive-less MacBook Air and Mac Mini.
With Recovery HD any Lion user can run Disk Utility to clean house—or clean out house—or reinstall OS X from Apple's servers. But Apple has also added a new tool called Lion Internet Recovery for the latest drive-less MacBook Air and Mac Mini.
For more OS X Lion tips, read OS X Lion: Lion-taming TipsLet's say your Mac is totally toasted. You can't even boot into Recovery HD using the keyboard command. With Lion Internet Recovery, a new Macbook Air (or Mac Mini) can automatically connect to and boot from Apple's servers using your preferred wireless network, run a test on your hardware (memory and hard drive), and download Recovery HD so your Lion can land on its feet. Sounds great, right? The problem comes in testing it. It turns out that breaking OS X beyond repair isn't easy.
I began by booting my 11-inch MacBook Air into Target Disk Mode (Command + T) and connecting to its big brother, the 13-inch MacBook Air with a ThunderBolt cable. For simplicity's sake, hereafter I'll call my 11-inch "Li'l Mac" and the 13-inch "Big Mac."
I began by deleting the entire Library folder at the root level of Li'l Mac. How's a Mac to boot without a Library folder? It found a way. Once Li'l Mac had rebooted it began to rebuild its Library from the System Library folder. Li'l Mac: 1. Big Mac: 0.
Back on Big Mac, with Li'l Mac connected via Target Disk Mode, I deleted Li'l Mac's recreated Library folder and raised my bet: I deleted the entire System folder (90,000 odd items). I rebooted Li'l Mac. It waited 10 seconds with a gray screen and, with (seemingly) no other options available, it did the unthinkable: Li'l Mac booted to Windows from its Bootcamp partition. Li'l Mac: 2. Big Mac: 0.
Reconnected via Target Disk Mode, I used Disk Utility to format the Bootcamp partition. With Windows wiped, where was Li'l Mac to go? Rebooted, it sat on the gray screen for 20 seconds and finally opened Recovery HD. Was this Lion Internet Recovery? It wasn't, I determined, after consulting Apple's documentation. OS X still wasn't (completely) dead. Li'l Mac: 3. Big Mac: 0.
It was time for the nuclear option. On Big Mac, with Li'l Mac mounted as a disk via Target Disk Mode, I opened Disk Utility and formatted the entire drive, clearing both partitions to one clean slate. Li'l Mac had, effectively, a blank SSD. I rebooted Li'l Mac to see a blinking folder. Success. To initiate Lion Internet Recovery, I rebooted once more and held down Command + R. With literally nothing on the drive, Li'l Mac would have to beam up to Apple's servers via Wi-Fi.
And it worked. A new gray screen a spinning Earth and status appeared. Recovering Recovery HD from Apple's servers wasn't a quick process—it took nearly 45 minutes. But once it had completed, my blank Li'l Mac rebooted to Recovery HD, from which I could reinstall Lion.
No disk? No problem.
Whether you have a new Mac with Lion Internet Recovery or you've simply installed Lion on an existing machine, Apple makes it easy to forget the disk. Reinstalling OS X from Apple's servers is quick and easy. Running maintenance through Recovery HD's Disk Utility works just as well—perhaps better—as it had from a disk. And with Internet Recovery for the MacBook Air and Mac Mini, Apple has proven that no matter how hard you try, Lion will find a way to claw its way back onto your computer. RIP DVDs. With Internet-delivered OS X, Apple makes the disk drive look like the floppy drive.
Whether you have a new Mac with Lion Internet Recovery or you've simply installed Lion on an existing machine, Apple makes it easy to forget the disk. Reinstalling OS X from Apple's servers is quick and easy. Running maintenance through Recovery HD's Disk Utility works just as well—perhaps better—as it had from a disk. And with Internet Recovery for the MacBook Air and Mac Mini, Apple has proven that no matter how hard you try, Lion will find a way to claw its way back onto your computer. RIP DVDs. With Internet-delivered OS X, Apple makes the disk drive look like the floppy drive.
No comments:
Post a Comment