SIR: Restore 2011 MBA from USB? How to create

[piratemc74]

Hi - I have been reading / participating in an apple thread about restoring my new MBA. I know about using the cmd-r, and re-downloading Lion. I want to be able to build a boot USB, so, I can do this, as required. I plan on my MBA being a "crash and burn" development box, and hate the idea of rebuilding via download every time.

Any suggestions, and/or success stories? Thanks.

 

[h00ligan]

carbon copy cloner.

Clone the virgin to a usb drive, including on the drive a copy of ccc - then when necessary, reboot to the cloned drive and clone back to hdd.

 

[Cynicalone]

Right now you would need 10.7.1 update to be released.

I have a USB copy of Lion I made from the 10.7.0 retail version and it will not work with the 2011 MacBook Air. The new Air's are shipping with a newer version of Lion. Once everyone is on 10.7.1 it will be easy to do.

 

[Bob Coxner]

carbon copy cloner.

Clone the virgin to a usb drive, including on the drive a copy of ccc - then when necessary, reboot to the cloned drive and clone back to hdd.

How large a usb drive do you need?

 

[Cynicalone]

How large a usb drive do you need?

To make a Lion USB you will need over 4GB.

I used an 8GB SanDisk Cruzer.

 

[piratemc74]

Have you done this?

carbon copy cloner.

Clone the virgin to a usb drive, including on the drive a copy of ccc - then when necessary, reboot to the cloned drive and clone back to hdd.

Thanks for the reply. I have read elsewhere where ccc won't work on lion?

 

[pil0tflame]

Thanks for the reply. I have read elsewhere where ccc won't work on lion?

Newest version of Carbon Copy Cloner is suppose to work fine with Lion.

If not, give Super Duper! a try: http://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper/SuperDuperDescription.html

It does the same thing as CCC more or less.

 

[GadgetGeek407]

I have 10.7 in usb as well but when 10.7.1 comes out how would I put that on a thumb drive considering i won't have the actual install file dmg?

 

[piratemc74]

Success

here are the basic steps.

1. Start Internet recovery (reboot holding down cmd-r), have at least a 16gb USB stick ready

2. Select option to instal Lion to USB drive. Where I am right now, it said it would take 5+ hours. It probably took 4+. After the download, it will immediately reboot, and start installing, so you need to catch it before the reboot. At this point, power it off, or yank out USB.

3. Reboot to normal drive. The USB now has the installesd.dmg. There are numerous example on the web of how to make this bootable. Note: you probably need to reset PRAM here. Look at general Mac help dock on how to do this.

4. Ultimately, I was able to boot from the USB, format the internal drive, and reinstall.

My only issue now is, when I reboot into recovery mode (holding cmd-r down during reboot), I get a spinning globe with a message saying "starting recovery process from network, this may take a while". It then presents a drop down box to select wifi, trouble is, the drop down list isn't populated with every hotspot it sees, just 2 or 3 that seem to be alphabetical. There is an option to enter ssid and pw, but it won't accept any combination.

Now, here is the odd part. If I reboot, and hold the alt/option key down, I can boot into the recovery partition. Weird.