If I just toss a drive into a cMBP's HDD bay (obviously hook it up properly) can I boot remotely and install ML that way or does it require some kind of bootloader in absence of the recovery partition on the original drive?
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ML Recovery from factory-fresh drive
- Thread starter mjn298
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Awesome, thanks.
I wasn't sure if accessing Internet Recovery was dependent on having the recovery partition on the disk (although I guess this would make it kind of pointless if your disk completely failed).
Can't wait until my SSD comes!
I wasn't sure if accessing Internet Recovery was dependent on having the recovery partition on the disk (although I guess this would make it kind of pointless if your disk completely failed).
Can't wait until my SSD comes!
No... that will give you Lion and not Mountain Lion.
When you do a command-r boot with a blank drive the system will default to a firmware (EFI) boot and Internet Recovery. Internet Recovery is going to install Lion since that is what your serial number is tied to and your computer came with Lion. AFTER you install Lion you will be able to go to the App Store and DL and install Mountain Lion.
You can read more about it here.
The easier route would be for you to DL Mountain Lion now before you swap the drive and make yourself a USB key installer using this free app. Then boot to the USB key after you install the new drive and install Mountain Lion from there.