No boot up disc/USB with new MacBook?

[raw8725]

Hello All,

I've just got a retina display 13inch Macbook. There is no reinstall disc/usb drive. If I want to do a fresh format at a later date what do I use to install from?

Thanks

 

[iVoid]

Hold down the COMMAND and R keys right after starting the computer up and it'll boot into the recovery partition(or internet recovery) to allow you to reinstall The OS.

 

[justperry]

^^This, what iVoid says.
The problem with this is that if you are on a slow or limited account it will take forever or eats your data plan.
I have 3 GB a month, that's not even enough for this to download, Apple should have put a complete Installer on the recovery partition, not this half A**** solution.

OP, use Recovery and don't download from the AppStore, the installer you download there is most likely not working, many machines have custom install.

 

[talmy]

If you make a full clone backup of your system to an external drive, you can use that to restore. I've owned about a dozen Macs over the past 8 years and have never needed to use a restore disk or recovery partition. I've only done restores after drive failures, and I've used the cloned backup.

Or if you live near an Apple Store, you can go there to restore your system at no cost.

Note that you are extremely unlikely to break the system requiring a fresh install (it has never happened to me). You might mess up your account, though, so it pays to set up a second administrator account you can log into in case you mess up your regular account.

 

[Vairamuthu]

You have 3 option

1, MAC comes with a recovery Partition in HD. you can use it whenever you want to format and install

2,You want a recovery HD in a separate External drive, you can make one. you need 1GB Usb drive (650MB needed for recovery partition).

Download recovery disk assistant here - http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1433
Format the usb drive with GUID partition and start recovery disk assistant and follow the instruction to create Recovery HD.

3, Final option and most recommended is to backup the whole system using the Time machine or Carbon copy clone .It will create a recovery partition also during the backup process. In the event of system crash. you can re-install the OS and backup all the content and your system will be up and running in few hours with all your old contents.

To Install OS and Backup

Hold down the command + R button until it brings up the Utilities. you can then choose from
1 disk utility to repair HDD
2 Erase and reinstall the fresh copy of OSX and
3 Restore mac from backup

 

[talmy]

3, Final option and most recommended is to backup the whole system using the Time machine or Carbon copy clone .It will create a recovery partition also during the backup process. In the event of system crash. you can re-install the OS and backup all the content and your system will be up and running in few hours with all your old contents.

To Install OS and Backup

Hold down the command + R button until it brings up the Utilities. you can then choose from
1 disk utility to repair HDD
2 Erase and reinstall the fresh copy of OSX and
3 Restore mac from backup

Note that using TimeMachine or CarbonCopyCloner (or SuperDuper!) are two completely separate approaches. What you state for recovery applies to TimeMachine, which also forces downloading a new OS X image, something the OP wants to avoid. With the cloned drive, you boot directly from it (so can be up and running in seconds, not hours, with your old contents). Then you just clone the external back to the (probably replaced) internal drive. This step will take hours.

 

[SR45]

Just another way if interested:

Lion DiskMaker ( US )


http://liondiskmaker.com

http://www.macworld.com/article/116...sier_to_create_a_bootable_lion_installer.html