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Anybody use their USB restore drive yet?

works great for me...

@kdoug-

I was able to snag a really tiny PNY Attache 8 gig (not much bigger than the Apple stick when it's retracted) flash drive for $12.99 at Staples today. Nice, because it didn't have any 'software' preinstalled that I needed to worry about. I followed your very clear instructions, and it worked perfectly! I now have a drive to keep here in the 'drawer' with all of the other backup stuff I thankfully seldom have to use and another to keep in the case with the air. Thanks!
 
nearpass said:
@kdoug-

I was able to snag a really tiny PNY Attache 8 gig (not much bigger than the Apple stick when it's retracted) flash drive for $12.99 at Staples today. Nice, because it didn't have any 'software' preinstalled that I needed to worry about. I followed your very clear instructions, and it worked perfectly! I now have a drive to keep here in the 'drawer' with all of the other backup stuff I thankfully seldom have to use and another to keep in the case with the air. Thanks!
Click to expand...
Great job nearpass! It takes a little time but it makes a perfect copy of the original. Good score on the PNY, I paid $19.99 for my Verbatim.:(
 
kdoug said:
I'm going to try and explain this step by step:
1. Download and install Onyx, this is so you can see hidden files on the Apple drive.

2. Make the invisible files visible with Onyx (Parameters tab/Finder/Misc. Options/Show hidden files).

3.Double click the Mac OS X installer .dmg file that was hidden so it'll mount to your desktop.

4. Download and install Carbon Copy Cloner.

5. Open CCC and for the source, pick the the Mac OS X installer image on your desktop.

6. For the destination, you should choose your formatted 8GB flash drive.

7. Click the clone button and it will make a bootable, system installable copy on your new flash drive. It will not copy iLife though, that step is next.

8. The reason you have to do step 7 is we need the hidden system files to make bootable for the next step.

9. Once your new drive is cloned with the installer, boot from it to make sure everything's OK.

10. Once booted back to your desktop, with both the Apple drive and your new USB drive plugged in, start CCC again.

11. Make the Apple USB flash drive your source and your USB drive your destination.

12. This is important! There's a check box on the right side under the source, click it. It say's "Delete items that don't exist on the source".

13. Before you start there should be a tiny little green light that say's the drive will be bootable. If it's red, you screwed up, start over.

14. This the final step. Hit the clone button, it will copy all the files from the Apple USB disk but leave the bootable files on your USB disk alone. It will copy and than it will verify. If everything went OK, you'll get a message that it was successful.

You now should have a working bootable copy with iLife installed on it. I've done it twice and booted several times from it, it works perfectly.

Good luck!
Click to expand...

I haven't tried it yet, but if it does work I think this post should be sticky'd :)
 
hsl said:
~/Desktop while doing sudo doesn't work :) you have to do /Users/username/Desktop/

I also had to use disk1s3, works like a charm with the DD command.
Click to expand...

I expected ~ to not work, but I expected ~username to work (it didn't). Using a direct name like you said seems to be working. It's running now. Thanks!
 
Well I can create the iso file using the dd command but as far as I can tell I still can't do anything with it. Neither carbon copy or others will directly load the iso file (or even if I convert it to a cdr file) and if I mount the disk I'm still told that the copy won't be bootable. I'll have to kdoug's solution once I get a USB drive to try.
 
Just a thought -- has anyone considered that maybe the fact that this USB drive Apple supplies is such a tight fit is because when booting off of it and installing an entire Operating System, any slight bump or bounce or tug could yank a standard USB drive right out of the port, and render the computer totally unusable (possibly permanently)?

I'm not saying this is the case, but I personally thought, "How kind that this USB restore stick actually STICKS in the port and feels solidly in there!" When I stick a SanDisk or Verbatim thumb drive in there it wobbles about and always makes me nervous when transferring files.
 
pfjellman said:
Just a thought -- has anyone considered that maybe the fact that this USB drive Apple supplies is such a tight fit is because when booting off of it and installing an entire Operating System, any slight bump or bounce or tug could yank a standard USB drive right out of the port, and render the computer totally unusable (possibly permanently)?

I'm not saying this is the case, but I personally thought, "How kind that this USB restore stick actually STICKS in the port and feels solidly in there!" When I stick a SanDisk or Verbatim thumb drive in there it wobbles about and always makes me nervous when transferring files.
Click to expand...

While losing the installation drive when installing could make the target unbootable, it won't render the Mac useless. You can always boot from the USB drive again, wipe the internal drive and reinstall.
 
bcaslis said:
While losing the installation drive when installing could make the target unbootable, it won't render the Mac useless. You can always boot from the USB drive again, wipe the internal drive and reinstall.
Click to expand...

true. although if i was 5 minutes away from a complete install and the thing wiggled loose i'd be cursing apple's name for having to start all over again. lol
 
In my post above about doing the cloning per kdoug...

pfjellman said:
Just a thought -- has anyone considered that maybe the fact that this USB drive Apple supplies is such a tight fit is because when booting off of it and installing an entire Operating System, any slight bump or bounce or tug could yank a standard USB drive right out of the port, and render the computer totally unusable (possibly permanently)?

I'm not saying this is the case, but I personally thought, "How kind that this USB restore stick actually STICKS in the port and feels solidly in there!" When I stick a SanDisk or Verbatim thumb drive in there it wobbles about and always makes me nervous when transferring files.
Click to expand...

I mentioned the PNY Attache...it's one of the newer really small drives with the contacts exposed like the Apple one, except that it can be withdrawn so that the contacts aren't always hanging out. I'd worry about throwing the Apple one in a bag and having the contacts somehow damaged. It also fits very snuggly, also nice. I live in the boonies and use an EVDO USB modem on my iMac. It's rather heavy and doesn't fit tightly, so often looses contact...I actually have it held on with a piece of tape. :rolleyes:
 
kdoug said:
I'm going to try and explain this step by step:
1. Download and install Onyx, this is so you can see hidden files on the Apple drive.

2. Make the invisible files visible with Onyx (Parameters tab/Finder/Misc. Options/Show hidden files).

3.Double click the Mac OS X installer .dmg file that was hidden so it'll mount to your desktop.

4. Download and install Carbon Copy Cloner.

5. Open CCC and for the source, pick the the Mac OS X installer image on your desktop.

6. For the destination, you should choose your formatted 8GB flash drive.

7. Click the clone button and it will make a bootable, system installable copy on your new flash drive. It will not copy iLife though, that step is next.

8. The reason you have to do step 7 is we need the hidden system files to make bootable for the next step.

9. Once your new drive is cloned with the installer, boot from it to make sure everything's OK.

10. Once booted back to your desktop, with both the Apple drive and your new USB drive plugged in, start CCC again.

11. Make the Apple USB flash drive your source and your USB drive your destination.

12. This is important! There's a check box on the right side under the source, click it. It say's "Delete items that don't exist on the source".

13. Before you start there should be a tiny little green light that say's the drive will be bootable. If it's red, you screwed up, start over.

14. This the final step. Hit the clone button, it will copy all the files from the Apple USB disk but leave the bootable files on your USB disk alone. It will copy and than it will verify. If everything went OK, you'll get a message that it was successful.

You now should have a working bootable copy with iLife installed on it. I've done it twice and booted several times from it, it works perfectly.

Good luck!
Click to expand...
Just a quick follow up to copy process of the USB restore disk.
Some of you have had success and some have had the "not enough disk space warning.

Once you get to step 12 and you check the box that say's "it'll delete the files
that don't exist on the source disk", it also say's it (will try) and unmount both disks from the desktop.

THis is important, it HAS to unmount both disks to make an exact copy or it won't work and you'll get the "not enough space warning.
To make it work properly, after step 8, make sure and close down your programs and REBOOT THE COMPUTER. Some of you are not doing this and that's why you're having problems.

If it for some reason it won't unmount the disks on the second copy, stop it and try it again. It takes about 15-20 seconds for CCC to Unmount the disks. Once this is done you're good to go.

If you follow my very detailed steps there shouldn't be a problem.
 
I haven't tried it either. Wait! My MBA still hasn't shipped. But I agree with the above user, this should be a sticky. Btw anybody tried formatting the apple USB stick?
 
gecis said:
I haven't tried it either. Wait! My MBA still hasn't shipped. But I agree with the above user, this should be a sticky. Btw anybody tried formatting the apple USB stick?
Click to expand...
No way to format. Apple's Disk Utility sees it as a CD/R Disk. It's really a bizarre little stick.
 
sorry for bringing this thread back but i just got ready to do it and everthing went great till i started on in the ilife part. it said not enough room. when first checked the thumb drive it had just over 8gb avail when i checked it again it said just under 8. i then noticed the thumbdrive had stuff preinstalled i tried to reformat it but that stuff doesn't go away :(. any ideas? is there a way to find a thumbdrive that doesn't have all the xtra crap on it?
 
lol @ reinstalling the OS on a new mac... at the VERY most download monolingual. Burn the (basically free flash drive) contents to a dvd and throw the drive in the garbage.
 
I just picked up a 32GB USB drive, partitioned it into 8/24, then used the method on this thread to clone my drive. That way I have the drive at home safe in the box, and i have a stick I can carry around with me just in case I have to reinstall or run a hardware test. :)

I filled the rest of the drive with images from my iWork/Office/etc discs, so I can literally reinstall my entire system with just 1 stick wherever I am. It even fit an entire windows xp VMware image configured for what I do at work, so I dont have to go through reinstalling that :cool:
 
A lot of negative posts on the form of the drive. Is it any different from the PNY micro attache drives? I have a few of these and I think they are great. Less likely to break than traditional drives.
 

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Just wanted to point out the restore drive does NOT contain the SL compatible version of QT7. I had to dig out the retail upgrade DVD to get this file.
 
Reinstall

Is it possible to just order a cd/dvd from Apple, fee of course, and then install it with a dvd drive?
 
PBG4 Dude said:
Just wanted to point out the restore drive does NOT contain the SL compatible version of QT7. I had to dig out the retail upgrade DVD to get this file.
Click to expand...

QuickTime 7.6.6 for Snow Leopard is always available on Apple's knowledge base: http://support.apple.com/kb/dl923

Also, has anyone else implemented the Firmware Password on their MBA? It's a nice added protection so you can't boot off the network or a USB drive without a password, and it can't be bypassed by changing the memory size, since it's soldered onto the board!

http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1352
 
kdoug said:
I'm going to try and explain this step by step:
1. Download and install Onyx, this is so you can see hidden files on the Apple drive.

2. Make the invisible files visible with Onyx (Parameters tab/Finder/Misc. Options/Show hidden files).

3.Double click the Mac OS X installer .dmg file that was hidden so it'll mount to your desktop.

4. Download and install Carbon Copy Cloner.

5. Open CCC and for the source, pick the the Mac OS X installer image on your desktop.

6. For the destination, you should choose your formatted 8GB flash drive.

7. Click the clone button and it will make a bootable, system installable copy on your new flash drive. It will not copy iLife though, that step is next.

8. The reason you have to do step 7 is we need the hidden system files to make bootable for the next step.

9. Once your new drive is cloned with the installer, boot from it to make sure everything's OK.

10. Once booted back to your desktop, with both the Apple drive and your new USB drive plugged in, start CCC again.

11. Make the Apple USB flash drive your source and your USB drive your destination.

12. This is important! There's a check box on the right side under the source, click it. It say's "Delete items that don't exist on the source".

13. Before you start there should be a tiny little green light that say's the drive will be bootable. If it's red, you screwed up, start over.

14. This the final step. Hit the clone button, it will copy all the files from the Apple USB disk but leave the bootable files on your USB disk alone. It will copy and than it will verify. If everything went OK, you'll get a message that it was successful.

You now should have a working bootable copy with iLife installed on it. I've done it twice and booted several times from it, it works perfectly.

Good luck!
Click to expand...

Worked excellent, thank you!
 
yep, i used to re-install iLife '11 after migrating all my info over from my MBP.

I have to say, it was an effort getting it in and out, however mines is now safely tucked back into the box.

I know it's cheap, but we have to remember this thing isn't used by the majority of Apple users, and due to the fact it will be lost alot, Apple will most likely have spares in stores. It's better than nothing, or even a restore disc, which would require disc sharing or an external SuperDrive - which would be a nightmare.

Although it is most likely only going to be used once, so it's probably not designed to survive multiple uses.

I love my new MBA - cheap restore stick or not :p
 
Well, I needed to use my restore drive and now I can't find it -- I thought I put it where I always put important things, but it wasn't there :(

Called Apple and they are sending out a new one -- but they said it takes 10 days or so because they are specific to each machine and have to be made to order. (And a CSR would never lie, would they? :) )

Anyway, 2nd order of business (after doing a restore) will be to clone the drive per the instructions here -- and then staple it to my forehead so I don't lose it again...

Luckily, it is my traveling computer and I am not traveling over the holidays...
 
kdoug said:
Whenever I get a new computer, I'll usually do a fresh install without the languages and translations. The drive stick is made of cheap plastic and when you install it into the USB port it takes some effort. When you remove it. the port leaves 2 rather large scratch marks on the bottom and four on the top. I'm not totally thrilled with the design or material of this. The other problem is the size, it is smaller than I originally thought, allot of people are going to lose it. I'm going to buy an 8GB flash drive and see if I can copy it for future use.
Click to expand...

For removing some languages and translations, I don't think a clean install it's needed. I did the same with an app called "CleanMyMac"
 
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