Mountain Lion Recovery CD Does Not Come With My 2012 iMac

[beeinformed]

Hi,

When I received my 27 inch 2012 iMac computer, I noticed it did not come with a Mountain Lion recovery cd.

Is there another method to restore the operating system if I need to and should I contact Apple to see if they will send me a cd?

Thanks in advance for your help with this issue!

[OllyW]

Apple no longer supply recovery disks.

Here are the instructions to reinstall Mountain Lion.

[hallux]

Apple no longer provides recovery media, this started with OS X Lion. For recovery, you boot the Mac and hold CMD + R to start recovery from the recovery partition. If you need to reinstall the OS, it will download the needed files from Apple.

OllyW beat me to it!

[r0k]

Originally Posted by hallux

Apple no longer provides recovery media, this started with OS X Lion. For recovery, you boot the Mac and hold CMD + R to start recovery from the recovery partition. If you need to reinstall the OS, it will download the needed files from Apple.

OllyW beat me to it!

That's mostly true... But Apple provides a couple of ways (one unofficial, one official) to create your own recovery media.

I created my own bootable USB stick for ML. I started doing this under Lion. I've never had to use one but I like having them. You get an 8 GB stick and "restore" the InstallESD.dmg that comes in the ML install file BEFORE you run the install. In your case, since your machine came with ML, it's unclear to me whether you can simply download ML in "purchased items" in the app store. If so, you can download the installer app, create your USB stick, then delete the install app. This is the unofficial method.

For a while, Apple was providing free USB sticks to Lion users who were having trouble with recovery but the Apple sticks didn't contain a complete OS and relied heavily on downloading stuff over the internet during installation.

There is also a way to create a USB stick yourself without using the installer app. This method creates the bootable USB stick that does not contain the entire OS. Apple offers a free a utility to create the USB stick. This is the official method.

[Weaselboy]

Originally Posted by r0k

In your case, since your machine came with ML, it's unclear to me whether you can simply download ML in "purchased items" in the app store.

It won't be listed in App Store purchases since the machine came with Mountain Lion. You need to use this work around to snag the installer from Apple's servers.

[Apple fanboy]

Originally Posted by beeinformed

Hi,

When I received my 27 inch 2012 iMac computer, I noticed it did not come with a Mountain Lion recovery cd.

Is there another method to restore the operating system if I need to and should I contact Apple to see if they will send me a cd?

Thanks in advance for your help with this issue!

And if it did come with a recovery CD what would you do with it? Use it as a coaster? I think Apple would have double standards if they sent CD's with machines without a drive!

[beeinformed]

Thanks everyone for helping me! I just have another question which is, can I create a recovery cd (for the Mountain Lion OS), using a blank dvd/cd disk on my Apple Superdrive?

Thanks again for your asistance!

[Weaselboy]

Originally Posted by beeinformed

Thanks everyone for helping me! I just have another question which is, can I create a recovery cd (for the Mountain Lion OS), using a blank dvd/cd disk on my Apple Superdrive?

Thanks again for your asistance!

Yep. Just grab the installer DMG like I described in my post above, then use this free app with to make a DVD installer.