For Lion, you ran an article about making a bootable backup of the OS X installer disk image in case of a hard drive failure. I skipped Lion, but now I have upgraded to OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion, and would like to make a bootable installer disk.
We previously covered how to make a bootable DVD or thumb drive of the Lion installer (bit.ly/ml_lionboot). The same instructions are still valid for creating a bootable copy of the OS X 10.8 (Mountain Lion) installer. You should note, however, that with Mountain Lion, you can’t fit the installer on a standard, single-layer DVD.
With both Lion and Mountain Lion, an “OS X Recovery” partition is added to your Mac. By booting into Recovery Mode, you can easily troubleshoot your Mac, recover OS X, and do disk repairs. You can boot into OS X Recovery mode by holding down Command-R while booting your Mac. So you’re really not obligated to make your own boot disk.
Boot into OS X Recovery mode by holding down Command-R while booting your Mac.
With newer Macs, if you have a disk error that prevents your Mac from being able to access the drive and recovery partition, your Mac can still access the OS X Internet Recovery feature by booting directly from Apple’s servers.
You can read more about the OS X Internet Recovery feature and possible errors that could occur during the recovery process by visiting Apple’s knowledge-base article here: www.bit.ly/ml_irecovery.
GOT A TECH QUESTION OR A HELPFUL TIP TO SHARE?
Email ask@maclife.com or write to Mac|Life,
4000 Shoreline Ct, Suite 400, South San Francisco, CA 94080
