How to make Recovery Disk without using Assistant and/or Downloading?

http://9to5mac.com/2011/08/08/apple...s-x-lion-recoveryinstallation-external-drive/

 

Try creating an image from the usb drive and burning it to dvd.

 

your air doesnt have a dvd drive, so why the NEED for a dvd of lion?

 

Hi i can help you get Lion from your Recovery HD. (Credits below)

1. Open Terminal and type :

 diskutil list

2. Look for Recovery HD and take note of its identifier.

3. Mount the recovery HD: 

diskutil mount readOnly /dev/[identifier]
replace [identifier] with your Recovery HD identifier.
this is mine >> diskutil mount readOnly /dev/disk0s3

4. The disk image inside the recovery HD is invisible, hence you need to mount it by typing this into the terminal: hdiutil attach "/Volumes/Recovery HD/com.apple.recovery.boot/BaseSystem.dmg" 


5. Now, from the newly mounted Mac OS X Base System image, double-click the 'Install Mac OS X' application at the root of the disk.

6. Proceed with installation and once it asks you for a disk to install on, choose the external drive or spare partition. (recommend not using Macintosh HD)

7. Enter your admin password when prompted, and the installer will start downloading.

8. Open an old-style (non-autosaving) application that still uses the traditional Save, Save As..., etc. commands in the File menu (I used TextWrangler) and make a new unsaved document, and type a few things in it. This will give you a little insurance against the installer rebooting the system, since the app won't let the system reboot until you respond to its message asking whether you want to save the document or not.

The installer will start downloading some packages into a folder called Mac OS X Install Data on the root of the drive you're installing onto. It will be the file in the folder with the largest file size. Once the file finishes downloading, the installer will extract the InstallESD.dmg image from it and delete the package. This will be fine as long as you don't let the app restart your machine.

9. Wait for the download to finish. Once the installer finishes download and prompts you to restart, Force quit the installer (Command + Q)

10. You should now have a file called InstallESD.dmg in the Mac OS X Install Data folder. You can burn this to a DVD, or image it to a USB flash drive to create a boot disk.

*I have tried out all the way to Step 5 and it works. haven't got the time to continue.

I did not created the steps. I simply shorten the article into a step by step guide.
Instructions posted here are form http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20110831105634716