$2700 iMac and no hardcopy of OS X Mountain Lion

No Mac coming with Mac OS X 10.7 Lion or OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion has physical restore media included.

OS X: About OS X Recovery

If you want to make a bootable installation medium, you can follow these steps:

• Lion DiskMaker

• Create bootable installation medium for OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion
​

There are a number of posting showing how you can load the RECOVERY portion of OSX on a thumb drive. Would that help??

I've always created clone backups of my Macs and when I've had to replace a drive (defective or upgrading) I just copy back from the clone. I've never reinstalled a fresh OS.

A low cost solution would be to buy Mountain Lion from the Mac App Store, extract the disk image, and copy it to a USB Flash drive if you really must have installation media. That would run under $30, including the flash drive.

Just create one on a USB stick. Takes 20 minutes to install from it.

Here you go: DISASTER AVERTED

Does anyone know if I format my drive I would lose the fusion drive ?

edry.hilario said:

Does anyone know if I format my drive I would lose the fusion drive ?

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My understanding, based on what others have posted in playing with or upgrading their brand new machines, is that by default, the system will attempt to fuse a HDD with a SSD if it finds the two installed in the machine (not connected via TB or USB). So, my assumption is that formatting your drive will not break the fusion drive, or at the very least, the system will want to rejoin the parts should you accidentally break it. You can disable that function via terminal commands. Again, just my understanding.

It seems that all methods of creating an ML USB install drive mentioned here refer to using a downloaded copy of ML from the store, and require the installESD.dmg file. Apple's method starts out with the objective of creating an install drive from a Mac with ML pre-installed, then resorts to using the installESD.dmg file either from the apps folder or re-downloading it from the store. There's no procedure for using a pre-installed OS.

edry.hilario said:

Does anyone know if I format my drive I would lose the fusion drive ?

Click to expand...

Why would you want to re-format it?

If you are trying to create a non OS X drive, it won't work as the software code to manage the Fusion drive is in OS X. When you create the Fusion drive it will format it for you as part of the process, whether done manually with terminal commands (DIY Fusion), or automatically by the new version of Disk Utility. You can erase it if you wish to reinstall your entire system.

talisabt said:

Is anyone annoyed and frustrated by the lack of a downloadable hard copy of mountain lion osx from which we can install and use as needed? As it stands, it takes me 4+ hours to download to reinstall ML. Of course, there's no DVD drive so asking for a DVD copy is ludicrous..

If anyone has proven workarounds, let me know!

Click to expand...

I am right there with you bud I just had the same issue today. I formatted my drive completely forgetting I never paid for lion it came on my Mac. Well I try to install from the cloud and it tells me I didn't purchase it of course. I call apple and I'm happy to pay for the software but I'm told that wont help me. It's apparently impossible clean install lion. I get transferred to tech guys ( the go to software guys wink wink) where the best they come up with is restore time machine create a new admin account and delete the old one. Seems ridiculous there such a lack of support for software. Oh btw I'm being charged for that tech call thanks for the fisting on the way out apple. I love apple products I love their customer service most of the time but some things need to change apparently.

I'm not really trying to side with Apple but this information is out there, that there really hasn't been a hard copy of OS X since Snow Leopard. Especially if one frequents this site.

I actually felt the same way back in 2004-ish I believe, with an HP laptop, when Windows was on a repair partition on the hard drive. If you accidentally formatted the entire drive then you were SOL unless you had a copy lying around.

If your internet is somewhat slow then, 4+ hours can be done overnight while you sleep then make a copy for safe keeping in the morning. I can understand the frustration in having to wait that long but if you make a copy then you'll only have to download it once.

If you take it to an Apple store, they can fix it right for you.

drambuie said:

It seems that all methods of creating an ML USB install drive mentioned here refer to using a downloaded copy of ML from the store, and require the installESD.dmg file. Apple's method starts out with the objective of creating an install drive from a Mac with ML pre-installed, then resorts to using the installESD.dmg file either from the apps folder or re-downloading it from the store. There's no procedure for using a pre-installed OS.

Click to expand...

So there's no procedure for using a pre-installed OS and then transfering it to a usb drive? Is there anyway around this?

beeinformed said:

So there's no procedure for using a pre-installed OS and then transfering it to a usb drive? Is there anyway around this?

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I think you could use Carbon Copy Cloner to clone a your HD to a large USB thumb drive and possibly trim it to just os x and some disk tools but the downloading the installer from the app store an making an installer drive is easy enough and you can use that 1 drive on all your Mac's to install... the CCC clone may or may not boot on a different type of mac... (ie a clone of a mini may not boot on an iMac, Macbook pro or what not becasue of the differences in hardware)

-apple could easily make a usb stick for resale,they don't because they want everything geared towards the cloud (restore,apps,itunes ect)...they want you there to make $$$

-why apple doesn't at least do what ms does with it's partners in creating a full recovery partition (where you can do a fresh reinstall without having to dl anything) is beyond me...

-yes downloading ml from app store and using products like "liondiskmaker" can preform making your own usb stick...but in some cases the app store version of ml is not compatible with your mac and therefore you need to use below link work around (major pain in the a**)
http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20110831105634716&query=lion+usb

-what i do is download superduper (can also use carbon copy,but it's no longer free)....using superduper i make a copy of fresh osx onto a external usb drive...then if you ever need to reinstall just boot from external drive and use superduper to copy back to internal drive...
http://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper/SuperDuperDescription.html

talisabt said:

You can't put it on usb.

Facepalm, seriously guys.. wake up and think before you post.

Click to expand...

come again?

talisabt said:

You can't put it on usb.

Facepalm, seriously guys.. wake up and think before you post.

Click to expand...

This says you are wrong

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4848

I have had Mountain Lion on an 8GB USB stick that I never use for anything else anymore since it officially released and have used it to install Mountain Lion on a few different macs (cheeky yeh). Never have had an issue

Droidrage729 said:

I am right there with you bud I just had the same issue today. I formatted my drive completely forgetting I never paid for lion it came on my Mac. Well I try to install from the cloud and it tells me I didn't purchase it of course. I call apple and I'm happy to pay for the software but I'm told that wont help me. It's apparently impossible clean install lion. I get transferred to tech guys ( the go to software guys wink wink) where the best they come up with is restore time machine create a new admin account and delete the old one. Seems ridiculous there such a lack of support for software. Oh btw I'm being charged for that tech call thanks for the fisting on the way out apple. I love apple products I love their customer service most of the time but some things need to change apparently.

Click to expand...

That really doesn't make sense. The computer doesn't come with physical media or Internet recovery. I believe you. It just doesn't make sense.

I recently got a MacBook Pro back from repair and while it originally came with Mountain Lion, the OS X Internet Recovery system only lets me download Lion. So I had to pay to upgrade to what the computer originally had. I've thought about calling them to get the money refunded, but it's a pain to talk to people who don't understand what you're telling them.

swingerofbirch said:

That really doesn't make sense. The computer doesn't come with physical media or Internet recovery. I believe you. It just doesn't make sense.

I recently got a MacBook Pro back from repair and while it originally came with Mountain Lion, the OS X Internet Recovery system only lets me download Lion. So I had to pay to upgrade to what the computer originally had. I've thought about calling them to get the money refunded, but it's a pain to talk to people who don't understand what you're telling them.

Click to expand...

I would have been happy to pay for lion no biggie or leaped or whatever came on a 2007 Mac mini but I was told that wouldn't solve my issue. Not sure I am new to Mac systems got my first mac and iPhone this past year so I didn't expect any of that.

talisabt said:

You can't put it on usb.

Facepalm, seriously guys.. wake up and think before you post.

Click to expand...

Go re-read the first reply (post #2).

Or go here

Droidrage729 said:

I am right there with you bud I just had the same issue today. I formatted my drive completely forgetting I never paid for lion it came on my Mac. Well I try to install from the cloud and it tells me I didn't purchase it of course.

Click to expand...

swingerofbirch said:

That really doesn't make sense. The computer doesn't come with physical media or Internet recovery. I believe you. It just doesn't make sense.

I recently got a MacBook Pro back from repair and while it originally came with Mountain Lion, the OS X Internet Recovery system only lets me download Lion. So I had to pay to upgrade to what the computer originally had.

Click to expand...

Droidrage729's case is with a used mini that originally had Tiger or perhaps Leopard. Swingerofbirch's case probably is with a system that originally had Lion but perhaps qualified for the free upgrade. Was this also a used system?

Prior to Lion systems came with recovery disks. I understand that these disks are available from Apple for a small fee. Early systems that came with Lion (and all later systems) have a recovery partition that will download the system via the Internet and a program is available that will copy the recovery partition to a USB flash drive so you are covered in case of a drive failure or replacement as long as you make the recovery drive first! New systems that were released after Lion came out have the ability to restore the OS directly from the Internet (Apple calls this "OS X Internet Recovery"). OS X Internet Recovery restores the OS that was originally on the system.

Systems that have been upgraded to Lion or Mountain Lion via the Mac App Store have non-transferable licenses, so that if the system is sold they cannot (legally) be sold with the upgraded OSes. Such systems should be restored to their original OS either by the recovery disks (save those disks!), a saved Lion Recovery flash drive, or via OS X Internet Recovery. The gotcha here is that a Lion system that didn't have OS X Internet Recovery once it is upgraded to Mountain Lion has no way to go back unless the recovery USB flash drive was made.

On the purchaser end, it is certainly "buyer beware" and the safest bet is to only buy a used system with Snow Leopard or earlier recovery disks provided, or one that is running the same OS that was on the system when purchased (might be tricky to determine!).

In any case, nothing beats buying an external hard drive and cloning your internal drive for later recovery. It's fast and sure, if not cheap.