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aircanman

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Feb 2, 2011
397
93
UK
As title really, as I have no boot disc or usb drive, how will I get my OS back on the new hard drive? Does the mac have a feature to download the os?
 

sonicrobby

macrumors 68020
Apr 24, 2013
2,493
552
New Orleans
When you turn the mac on and it makes the sound/white screen, hold the "option" key on the keyboard, you can load it from there
 

aircanman

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Feb 2, 2011
397
93
UK
When you turn the mac on and it makes the sound/white screen, hold the "option" key on the keyboard, you can load it from there

When you say load it, the drive will be blank, how does the mac get hold of the software to load onto the drive?
 

Weaselboy

Moderator
Staff member
Jan 23, 2005
34,481
16,195
California
As title really, as I have no boot disc or usb drive, how will I get my OS back on the new hard drive? Does the mac have a feature to download the os?

Yes. If you install a blank drive, just do a command-option-r boot to Internet Recovery. That will DL a recovery screen where you can use Disk Utility to format the new drive to Mac OS Extended. After that quit Disk Util and click install OS and the 4.7GB OS will DL and install. All this is over the Internet, so it can take some time depending on your Internet speed.

If you want to avoid the DL and speed things up, just attach and external USB drive and make a Time Machine backup. Then once the new drive is installed you can option key boot to the backup, format the new drive, then click restore. This will be much faster as you do not need to DL everything again. It will also put back all you apps and data etc. IMO this is the preferred method.
 

aircanman

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Feb 2, 2011
397
93
UK
Yes. If you install a blank drive, just do a command-option-r boot to Internet Recovery. That will DL a recovery screen where you can use Disk Utility to format the new drive to Mac OS Extended. After that quit Disk Util and click install OS and the 4.7GB OS will DL and install. All this is over the Internet, so it can take some time depending on your Internet speed.

If you want to avoid the DL and speed things up, just attach and external USB drive and make a Time Machine backup. Then once the new drive is installed you can option key boot to the backup, format the new drive, then click restore. This will be much faster as you do not need to DL everything again. It will also put back all you apps and data etc. IMO this is the preferred method.

Excellent I have a time machine backup all ready to go, so this will copy everything needed on my mac.
 

Weaselboy

Moderator
Staff member
Jan 23, 2005
34,481
16,195
California
Excellent I have a time machine backup all ready to go, so this will copy everything needed on my mac.

Yep. You can test it now if you want. Plug in the TM drive and option key boot. You will see the orange USB TM drive in a list of available boot devices.

Sounds like you were already good to go and just did not realize it. :)
 

aircanman

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Feb 2, 2011
397
93
UK
Yep. You can test it now if you want. Plug in the TM drive and option key boot. You will see the orange USB TM drive in a list of available boot devices.

Sounds like you were already good to go and just did not realize it. :)

For some reason my googling was coming across people who had upgraded from Lion to ML with the download, and either using a mounted usb or ext hdd, which was not answering the question!

Thanks for the info peeps.
 

aircanman

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Feb 2, 2011
397
93
UK
Just wanna say thanks to people who offered me advice with this, it was as simple as fitting the new drive, then plugging in the time machine disk, instantly I was greeted with the utilities window so I could format then reinstall everything, so seamless and this is what makes apple the best!
 
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