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Comment by furyg3 | Hacker News Reader

Hmm... so what happens if my hard drive crashes and I replace it myself?

From https://www.apple.com/macosx/whats-new/features.html#interne...

Internet Restore and Utilities

* Built into Lion: OS X Lion includes a built-in restore partition, allowing you to repair or reinstall OS X without the need for discs.

* Browse the web with Safari: Recovery mode now includes the Safari web browser, so you can check your email or browse the Apple Support site.

* Reinstall OS X: OS X can be reinstalled on your Mac from recovery mode.

* Restore from a Time Machine backup: Use recovery mode to restore your Mac from a Time Machine backup.

That doesn't answer the question at all. A dead hard drive will have an inoperable restore partition.

This seems like it will be a total PITA. PC restore partitions I've worked with always had weird quirks (strange partition types, special MBR boot loader code) that make them hard to copy/move to a new drive successfully.

“You bring your Mac to the Apple Store!” is probably the answer Apple would give you.

There might also be a way for you to put the installer on some drive. (There currently is one with the Developers Preview. It works just like the dmgs of older OS X discs and you can find it inside the App bundle of the installer you download in the App Store.)

Restore with your current restore DVD/flash drive first then reinstall to Lion.

I assume new computers will still come with the restore DVD or flash drive in the case of the Air. Sounds like the starting point to me.

In my case that is a Snow Leopard disk (my MBP came with Leopard).

So I have to install Snow Leopard, download and update to 10.6.7(?), and then download Lion?

That's a pretty horrible user experience.

Devils advocate, is it much more of a step then downloading all the other software updates that have been released since you acquired your disc?

It is an ugly step when you have to go through 3 or 4 updates in row that require reboots.

Have you actually updated an OS X install before, or are you just basing it on the crazy Windows update experience?

Apple distributes combo updates that will take you straight from a base 10.6 install to 10.6.7. You don't play the goofy multiple-version update game.

The occasional security release breaks that. I have had to install updates, and then it found more after a reboot. Though I haven't done that on a base 10.6 to current.

Pretty horrible experience for a tiny minority and a great experience for the majority. Sounds like Apple.

I'm sure Macs without floppy drives were a terrible experience for people that relied on floppies.

>Pretty horrible experience for a tiny minority and a great experience for the majority. Sounds like Apple.

How will having a shipped disk as an option ruin the experience of the majority? You analogy is flawed because floppy drives take up space and cost.

Sorta like "how will having a model with a floppy as an option ruin the experience of the majority?"

Nic Cage's hair is a bird, my analogy was flawed.

Maybe they will have a disk or other back up option, who knows but I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't.

Or just restore your time machine backup. I've done that across several macs for hard drives/dead boards/etc, as well as just straight upgrades. I'm still running on my original Tiger install from 2005 or 2006 (whenever it came out). It's been upgraded along the way.

Restore the Lion DMG to a USB drive using Disk Utility.

Edit: I think App Store will download the DMG to a known location so people can create backups.

On another forum[1], I read that the download includes a disk image for an emergency boot disk.

[1] http://www.heise.de/mac-and-i/news/foren/S-Re-Mac-OSX-Lion-n...

Interesting question. If you could get the app-store on your computer, you could just redownload the OS (buy once, install on any number of computers). But how do you get the app store on your fresh hard drive? A time machine restore would work, but what if you had no time machine... I wonder if apple will let you burn a dvd with the os once you purchase it. I am worried they might force you to go to an apple store (which would suck if you weren't near one), but who knows. If they don't offer a reasonable solution right now, I suspect they will have to offer one in the near future by force of customer outrage.

AFAIK you can't boot from a TimeMachine backup... in order to restore from TimeMachine in the event of an HDD crash, you need OS media. :/

Oh yeah. You are correct. I forgot because I included a partition on my time machine disk that is an OSX dvd, and so have restored from nothing but my time machine drive.

Hmm.. it wouldn't be too hard for them to include a bootable set of disk utilities with your time machine back up. But did they?

I hate having to wait for answers.

Don’t throw out your Snow Leopard disc I guess…

You do what the developers have been doing, going into the install app and copy the dmg to a dvd or usb stick so you can install it on other systems.

Unless they are removing the disk image from the production release (unlikely).

http://holgr.com/blog/2011/02/creating-a-bootable-os-x-10-7-...

I'd be surprised if part of the Lion install process didn't involve creating recovery media on a CD/DVD/flash drive.

It tied to your apple account . You can login into app store and install it without having to pay again just like how the current app store works with other apps.

Replacement harddrives tend to be empty.

I know not everybody has an external case, but many of those who replace own HDs do. They can (as I do):

Use Carbon Copy Cloner to backup / prepare for system upgrade.

Sure, that’s when you have a working and bootable backup. If you don’t (for example because you are using Time Machine) it’s not really clear what you do.

I think Apple has thought of some solution, we just don’t know it yet. It’s an interesting question.

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