Mountain Lion Reinstallation Query

[Prodigy.]

Hi Guys,

New here & new to mac, have been a windows user forever.

So just experimenting with my MBP, did the following:

1) Erased Disk through Recovery Tool at the startup screen (Command + R)

2) Reinstalled the OS from a bootable USB

My Expectations (coming from windows) would be that this is a 'clean' install.

However, my keychain seems to be intact!

What am I missing here? Hos is that possible when I fired the entire drive, or does erase have some ambiguous meaning?

 

[Dalton63841]

Did you happen to test out the Mavericks beta? Possibly it has kept your iCloud keychain...

 

[benwiggy]

Did you restore your user data? What aspects of your keychain are intact?
I've experienced that the Restore Partition can hold network wireless passwords.

Why did you not just boot from the USB and erase from there?

One final point: Coming from Windows, you're probably used to wiping the disk and reinstalling everything at the first sight of trouble. On OS X, it's nearly always unnecessary, and the absolute last resort. There are much quicker, less stressful (on the disk) ways of fixing most problems.

 

[Prodigy.]

@Dalton63841

Nope it wasn't the iCloud.


@ benwiggy

Yeah that could be it, wireless access was with me up till the restore (apparently needed to verify stuff from Apple servers etc.)
However, whichever stuff I used on the web, Jira, facebook, linkedin .. all seem to be intact. Which confuses me regarding the efficacy of this approach.

Yes, but this had nothing to do with trouble, I am just testing out all the 'advertised' recovery options here ... you're damn right to suspect about the windows experience though.

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Did you restore your user data?

And nope, didn't restore anything.

 

[Dalton63841]

No part of this makes any sense at all, and is not normal. An erase WOULD destroy your keychain, unless it was in iCloud. The recovery partition, just like the EFI "boot manager", remembers your wifi password because that is stored in PRAM(similar to stored bios settings). Mac's do that to allow network booting and time machine restores. The keychain on the other hand if not in iCloud is stored in the Library folders on the hard drive.

 

[Prodigy.]

No part of this makes any sense at all, and is not normal. An erase WOULD destroy your keychain, unless it was in iCloud. The recovery partition, just like the EFI "boot manager", remembers your wifi password because that is stored in PRAM(similar to stored bios settings). Mac's do that to allow network booting and time machine restores. The keychain on the other hand if not in iCloud is stored in the Library folders on the hard drive.

Yes, but wouldn't a fetch from iCloud require me to configure it up first? I skipped that at set up all together.

Plus, all my applications were gone, as expected. Weird ...

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Okay guys, I think I've got it.

I signed into google chrome. It probably updated my keychain with all the stuff!

 

[Dalton63841]

I signed into google chrome. It probably updated my keychain with all the stuff!

LOL That's probably what did it. Chrome will sync saved passwords with Mac's keychain if you give it access.

 

[Prodigy.]

LOL That's probably what did it. Chrome will sync saved passwords with Mac's keychain if you give it access.

Sneaky ...