Mountain Lion, Recovery Partition, DVDs

[BlueOcean]

Hi. I've pretty much decided I'm going to go for the Air over a Pro, and just deciding on config (I'll probably wait for AnandTech's review).

I have a few questions regarding the recovery partition as I've not used a Mac without an optical drive before.

1. If my Air comes with Lion, the recovery partition will have Lion on it. When ML comes out and I upgrade, will it also update the recovery partition to ML?

2. If I want to save space on the SSD, could I wipe the recovery partition and just create a bootable USB image of OS X to keep handy for emergencies? How much space do you think this would free up?

3. I know the Air can use the optical drive of my iMac wirelessly in OS X. Can it also do the same in Windows under Boot Camp?

4. I'll probably install Win 7 via Boot Camp, but to be honest, a lot of the Win things I use are older so I could also live with XP (it would take up less space no doubt). Does the Air still support Win XP via Boot Camp (I know they dropped Vista support so wasn't sure).

Thanks!

 

[theSeb]

Hi. I've pretty much decided I'm going to go for the Air over a Pro, and just deciding on config (I'll probably wait for AnandTech's review).

I have a few questions regarding the recovery partition as I've not used a Mac without an optical drive before.

1. If my Air comes with Lion, the recovery partition will have Lion on it. When ML comes out and I upgrade, will it also update the recovery partition to ML?

Yes. You can choose not to do this by creating a separate partition for ML and installing it there. Then you will have Lion, ML and two recovery partitions (one for ML and one for Lion)

2. If I want to save space on the SSD, could I wipe the recovery partition and just create a bootable USB image of OS X to keep handy for emergencies? How much space do you think this would free up?

This is pointless. The recovery partition is only 650 MB. You can check yourself by going into the terminal and typing

diskutil list

You will see something like this (except that you won't have two recovery partitions and two operating systems)

   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *251.0 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI                         209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Macintosh HD            229.7 GB   disk0s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk0s3
   4:                  Apple_HFS ML HD                   19.8 GB    disk0s4
   5:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk0s5

But it is possible to create a bootable Lion install / recovery USB if you want from the recovery partition and then get rid of the recovery partition. There are various ways to do this, but if you still have the recovery partition, then the easiest way to do this is by using Apple's Lion recovery disk assistant

http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1433

3. I know the Air can use the optical drive of my iMac wirelessly in OS X. Can it also do the same in Windows under Boot Camp?

Yes, this is possible.

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5287?viewlocale=en_US

You could even do this via normal network sharing, but stick with Apple's easy way.

4. I'll probably install Win 7 via Boot Camp, but to be honest, a lot of the Win things I use are older so I could also live with XP (it would take up less space no doubt). Does the Air still support Win XP via Boot Camp (I know they dropped Vista support so wasn't sure).

Thanks!

XP is even older than Vista. Bootcamp only supports 7. There really is no reason to go for XP over 7 since since 7 does everything faster and better and it is far more stable.

 

[Jhowland]

1) I don't have any personal experience with this but I would assume so, but then you probably would too.

2) It would be possible but you would have to look up what to delete and go digging around places of the file system apple don't want you to. I can't imagine it would be to much because a lion recovery USB takes up most of the space on a 8gb flash drive.

3) I couldn't tell you for sure but it's an OSX thing not a system level thing (like a optical drive IS a system level thing) so you would have to see if windows has support for that.

4) They have dropped support for new installations of XP and vista under lion and mountain lion. If you still have snow leopard on your iMac I THINK you can create a installation of windows XP on your iMac and transfer it with migration assistant to your MacBook air. If I am, and I may be, totally wrong someone please correct me.

Hope this helped

 

[theSeb]

4) They have dropped support for new installations of XP and vista under lion and mountain lion. If you still have snow leopard on your iMac I THINK you can create a installation of windows XP on your iMac and transfer it with migration assistant to your MacBook air. If I am, and I may be, totally wrong someone please correct me.

Migration assistant does not touch bootcamp. You could use Winclone to copy your bootcamp partition from one computer to another, but Windows does not always like that.

 

[BlueOcean]

Thanks a bunch guys.

1 seems fine and 2 I won't bother with if it's only 650MB.

4 - I guess I'll have to go with Win 7

3 - According to the link you gave

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5287?viewlocale=en_US

It says:

Requirements for the computer without an optical drive to use Remote Disc:

A network connection to a computer with an optical drive.
A computer that supports Remote Disc. This includes all MacBook Air models, Mac mini, and Mac mini server without an optical drive.
Mac OS X v10.4.11 or later. Note: If you're using Mac OS X v10.4.11, you need to install DVD or CD Sharing Setup Update for Mac v1.0.

I know the iMac can share its ODD under XP, but does this mean the Air can't receive it if it is booted into Windows? Or am I interpreting this incorrectly?

 

[theSeb]

Thanks a bunch guys.

1 seems fine and 2 I won't bother with if it's only 650MB.

4 - I guess I'll have to go with Win 7

3 - According to the link you gave

It says:



I know the iMac can share its ODD under XP, but does this mean the Air can't receive it if it is booted into Windows? Or am I interpreting this incorrectly?

It also says

On a Windows computer: Windows XP Service Pack 2 or later. You will also need to install the DVD or CD Sharing Update 1.0 for Windows.

The MBA running Windows is a Windows computer. You will need to install the DVD or CD sharing update for Windows on the MBA in Windows and then you'll be able to share the optical drive from your iMac.

 

[Jhowland]

Migration assistant does not touch bootcamp. You could use Winclone to copy your bootcamp partition from one computer to another, but Windows does not always like that.

Sorry, I really didn't know what exactly you could use to copy it to the MacBook but I did know that you could create a boot camp partition on snow leopard and I was 99% sure you could copy it to the MacBook

 

[theSeb]

Sorry, I really didn't know what exactly you could use to copy it to the MacBook but I did know that you could create a boot camp partition on snow leopard and I was 99% sure you could copy it to the MacBook

That is sound advice, but you can't use migration assistant for the copy. The problem with your advice is that Windows (especially XP) does not really enjoy having hardware changed underneath it. I remember having issues if I changed a motherboard or something else and tried to reboot. Fun and games. Now with Windows 7 it's more resilient to the problem, but it thinks you're trying to pirate it. I moved my Win 7 bootcamp from one computer to another and I could not activate it. I ended up calling MS support. It took about 10 minutes for them to understand what I was doing, but we got there eventually.

 

[kodeman53]

I use Parallels to run Win7 on my 2010 MBA11. When I received my 2012 MBA11, I used a Time Machine backup to move all my apps from the 2010 to the 2012. While I had to re-install the Parallels app, I had no problems with my Win7 virtual machine, no need to re-activate with MS, etc. I did have to re-activate my Office for Mac but not Win7.

 

[theSeb]

I use Parallels to run Win7 on my 2010 MBA11. When I received my 2012 MBA11, I used a Time Machine backup to move all my apps from the 2010 to the 2012. While I had to re-install the Parallels app, I had no problems with my Win7 virtual machine, no need to re-activate with MS, etc. I did have to re-activate my Office for Mac but not Win7.

Virtual machines work differently to native bootcamp so you indeed do that. When running in a VM, Windows does not know if you run the VM on one computer or another.

 

[Weaselboy]

Hi. I've pretty much decided I'm going to go for the Air over a Pro, and just deciding on config (I'll probably wait for AnandTech's review).

I have a few questions regarding the recovery partition as I've not used a Mac without an optical drive before.

1. If my Air comes with Lion, the recovery partition will have Lion on it. When ML comes out and I upgrade, will it also update the recovery partition to ML?

Just to clarify something I did not see mentioned here. Unlike some Windows OEM machines, the Mac (Lion) recovery partition does not contain Lion. It only contains a startup partition that allows you to download Lion (or later Mountain Lion) from Apple's servers. The recovery partition also contain some utilities like Disk Utility and the Open Firmware password utility, for example.

Also, your new Air will come with this same recovery utility in the computers firmware (EFI), so even if the drive recovery partition is gone or corrupted, you can still boot the the firmware recovery tool and do the same thing.

 

[BlueOcean]

It also says

On a Windows computer: Windows XP Service Pack 2 or later. You will also need to install the DVD or CD Sharing Update 1.0 for Windows.

The MBA running Windows is a Windows computer. You will need to install the DVD or CD sharing update for Windows on the MBA in Windows and then you'll be able to share the optical drive from your iMac.

True, but it says that under "Requirements for the computer with an optical drive to enable DVD or CD sharing: " so wasn't sure whether this covered the Air, since obviously in this case it's the computer without an optical drive.

But in any case, it seems like it won't be too difficult to work with either way. Thanks for your help dude

----------

Just to clarify something I did not see mentioned here. Unlike some Windows OEM machines, the Mac (Lion) recovery partition does not contain Lion. It only contains a startup partition that allows you to download Lion (or later Mountain Lion) from Apple's servers. The recovery partition also contain some utilities like Disk Utility and the Open Firmware password utility, for example.

Also, your new Air will come with this same recovery utility in the computers firmware (EFI), so even if the drive recovery partition is gone or corrupted, you can still boot the the firmware recovery tool and do the same thing.

Ahh, did not know this, though this explains why it's only 650MB. I guess it'll be a good idea for me to keep a .dmg on an external somewhere in case I need to restore without an internet connection.

 

[theSeb]

Just to clarify something I did not see mentioned here. Unlike some Windows OEM machines, the Mac (Lion) recovery partition does not contain Lion. It only contains a startup partition that allows you to download Lion (or later Mountain Lion) from Apple's servers. The recovery partition also contain some utilities like Disk Utility and the Open Firmware password utility, for example.

Also, your new Air will come with this same recovery utility in the computers firmware (EFI), so even if the drive recovery partition is gone or corrupted, you can still boot the the firmware recovery tool and do the same thing.

Indeed. Good points.