Is there a way to update my MBA 2010 USB Recovery Key with the Lion recovery partition while maintaining the iLife '11 installer? I tried copying the iLife installer, but the file was only 344kb, not enough for the full application.
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Recover Disk Asst with MBA 2010 USB Key
- Thread starter Kerber0s34
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How large is your USB key? Just make two partitions , one for the recovery partition and one for your iLife installer.
I wouldn't mess with the MBA USB restore drive. Instead get yourself a flash drive, it needs to be 1GB or larger (as the Lion Recovery Partition is only something like 750MB) and use this, Lion Recovery Disk Assistant to make a Lion Recovery Disk. This way you still have a way to recover Snow Leopard if necessary as well as your iLife apps.
Correct me if I'm wrong, isn't the USB restore drive simply just a 8GB memory stick? If I can create a Lion restore drive, then I won't need a SL one. I'd just like to use the pretty little Apple drive. There must be a way to save the iLife installer, then copy it back after creating the Lion recovery partition. I'm just not sure how to view the actual file system on the stick.
Sorry, I read your post again. You were speaking of the USB drive that Apple supplies with your MacBook Air.
The new Recovery assistant will just make a bootable USB/DVD that can restore Lion. It acts just like the built in recovery partition already included in every Lion install.
On a new/Separate USB drive you can make a Lion USB recovery partition AND include a separate partition on the same USB drive that has the iLife install.
To view the recovery files, just mount the partition.
I don't have any first hand knowledge of the Apple USB drive that shipped with the MBA or which files are for iLife. But I do know that the Lion Recovery Partition is only a very basic setup that allows you to re-download Lion from the Mac App Store and install it. The link I posted earlier just allows you to copy that Lion Recovery Partition to a 1GB or larger flash drive to use in case of an emergency. There are ways to make a bootable flash drive or DVD from the Lion Installer, you can find those here.
Technically, it is an 8GB usb flash drive. However, it has been flashed with a read-only file system and displays itself as a CD/DVD drive. This is done intentionally, so that neither the user nor the operating system can easily format or erase the contents on that drive. You can actually do this yourself with any USB flash drive using some advanced Unix terminal commands.
Now, it is still technically a writable device, so if you can figure out a way to reformat the thing, you can use it any way you wish. If I were you, though, I wouldn't bother. Do what I did and grab one of those tiny HP 8gb flash drives for about $20. They're really cool looking.
http://www.buy.com/prod/hp-v165w-8-...al/q/sellerid/11408470/loc/101/217547544.html
One reason to keep this USB drive intact is that according to this article if you sell your MacBook Air, you have to reinstall Snow Leopard on it to sell it.
Quote from article:
Quote from article:
If you sell your Apple-branded hardware to a third party, you must remove the Apple Software from the Apple- branded hardware before doing so, and you may restore your system to the version of the Apple operating system software that originally came with your Apple hardware (the Original Apple OS) and permanently transfer the Original Apple OS together with your Apple hardware
Makes sense. Though, that only applies to the MAS. If you buy one of those physical Lion install disks later this month, those should be no different than an installer DVD you used to be able to buy on the shelf. Those you should be able to transfer no problem.