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M Lion installer supplied with new Mac?

R

releevo

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Sep 6, 2012
8
0
I just purchased a new MBP 13in
Unlike my MBP purchased back in 2008
Time has changed and there is no OS X installation disc
What if I want to reinstall the system in the future?
Do I have to fork out another $20 to buy the download?
 
Duh! So that means it's impossible to erase everything on the disc and clean install? Not that I would do it for fun, but in the past I've had to do so once or twice..
 
releevo said:
Duh! So that means it's impossible to erase everything on the disc and clean install? Not that I would do it for fun, but in the past I've had to do so once or twice..
Click to expand...

It is not impossible. the you can always start into Recovery Mode when you install a new disk (unformatted) or have your already present disk formatted.
You could also create your own bootable installer (guides available via www search), I have done that, and that is also why OS X Recovery Disk Assistant is there. Just take a look at the two links provided in one of the two replies, the content provided there provides some information.
 
releevo said:
Duh! So that means it's impossible to erase everything on the disc and clean install? Not that I would do it for fun, but in the past I've had to do so once or twice..
Click to expand...
It's possible. OS X 10.7 and 10.8 create a "recovery partition" on the disk when installed. Hold down command and R when booting to boot into it. It gives you Safari with internet access, Disk Utility (which you can use to wipe the drive), and the option to install the version of OS X that you had on there. (If 10.7, the recovery partition will offer to install OS X 10.7; if 10.8, then 10.8. It will need to download the installer in either case.)

What if you're completely replacing the hard drive? You still have options. If I remember correctly, starting around 2010 (?) the recovery features were baked into the hardware and are hard drive-independent. However, the recovery partition corresponds to the operating system that the computer shipped with. Thus, a 2010- or 2011-system will allow you to install OS X 10.7, and you would need to then upgrade to 10.8. In theory Apple could release firmware updates to update the OS X version that the recovery feature corresponds to, but they have not done so at this point in time.

If your system is early enough that it lacks the hardware-based recovery feature, Apple has a Recovery Assistant. This allows you to boot off of a flash drive and access the usual recovery partition features. However, the tool only corresponds to OS X 10.7; Apple has not yet released one for OS X 10.8, and there's no indication that they will do so. So once again, you would install OS X 10.7, and then you would need to update it from there.
 
releevo said:
I just purchased a new MBP 13in
Unlike my MBP purchased back in 2008
Time has changed and there is no OS X installation disc
What if I want to reinstall the system in the future?
Do I have to fork out another $20 to buy the download?
Click to expand...

Since you did not get your Mountain Lion copy from the app store, you will not be able to DL it from there unless you want to pay the $20. You can however snag the installed version on your machine from Apple's servers using this admittedly arduous process. Then use the disk image you grabbed to make a USB key full installer using this free app.

This will give you the full Mountain Lion install on a USB key.
 
Thanks everyone was very helpful.
I think I'll be fine with the built-in recovery mode.
 
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