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Re: How to create bootable back-up disk for OS X Lion?
dkmarsh #18361 10/14/11 11:13 PM
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> Will the Mac App Store version of Lion continue to be simply 10.7 [....]

I've read that the App Store version will be the current updated version...that if you think you may ever want to revert you'd better have some sort of plan in effect.


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Re: How to create bootable back-up disk for OS X Lion?
ganbustein #18363 10/14/11 11:42 PM
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Originally Posted By: ganbustein

Re-think option 2. If you don't go out and buy an external disk for backup, you're eventually going to be screwed anyway. Not backing up is not a reasonable option.


Sure. I agree with you, and I have external hard drives I back up to.

But I'm not an average user. You're not an average user. To an average user, what you've just said is "If your computer does not come with installation media, that means you need to buy another hard drive, then find disk cloning software and use it."

Yes, a backup hard disk is a good thing to have. No, a requirement to purchase and then learn how to use a backup disk and cloning software is not in my mind an acceptable substitute for shipping a computer with installation media.

Originally Posted By: ganbustein
What I did was use SuperDuper to clone the InstallESD.dmg image onto my TM backup. (When SuperDuper makes a clone, it will carefully step around any TM backup on the destination volume, leaving it unscathed. The result is a single volume that is both a TM backup and a Lion Install disk.)

That makes your TM backup bootable.


Which is cool, for tech users who know the value of buying additional hard drives and understand cloning. I suspect that leaves out, at minimum, 80% of the computer using public.

If a person buys a computer, I believe that person should have the ability to start that computer in the event of a hard disk failure without resorting to additional expenditures, such as additional hard disks or a reliable broadband Internet connection. I personally find the industry practice of refusing to ship computers with installation media, first started by Dell and Gateway and now apparently picked up by Apple, quite disagreeable.


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Re: How to create bootable back-up disk for OS X Lion?
tacit #18364 10/14/11 11:45 PM
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Very well put; I most wholeheartedly agree!!!


The new Great Equalizer is the SEND button.

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Re: How to create bootable back-up disk for OS X Lion?
tacit #18367 10/15/11 12:55 AM
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<Like>


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Re: How to create bootable back-up disk for OS X Lion?
tacit #18368 10/15/11 01:08 AM
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A bit off-topic, perhaps, but totally pertinent... You've never told us how that Dell Inspiron episode ended.

Did they come through with media?


The new Great Equalizer is the SEND button.

In Memory of Harv: Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. ~Voltaire
Re: How to create bootable back-up disk for OS X Lion?
artie505 #18370 10/15/11 01:55 AM
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Originally Posted By: artie505
> Will the Mac App Store version of Lion continue to be simply 10.7 [....] I've read that the App Store version will be the current updated version...


Yep. Apple updates. Right now the App store has Lion as of 10.7.2 -- just released.

Re: How to create bootable back-up disk for OS X Lion?
macnerd10 #18371 10/15/11 02:03 AM
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" . . . chflags gets updated any time one updates OS, restarts or simply logs out; so the ~Library will become hidden again . . ."

FWIW: I have had this happen ONLY with the OS X update(s) and not when simply logging in/out OR during a re-start of the computer.

Re: How to create bootable back-up disk for OS X Lion?
tacit #18372 10/15/11 02:08 AM
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" . . . first started by Dell and Gateway and now apparently picked up by Apple, quite disagreeable . . .


Agreed. But this is The American Way of Capitalism i.e. If there is more money which can be made . . . (sarcasm intended)

wink smirk

Re: How to create bootable back-up disk for OS X Lion?
tacit #18373 10/15/11 02:09 AM
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Originally Posted By: tacit
If a person buys a computer, I believe that person should have the ability to start that computer in the event of a hard disk failure without resorting to additional expenditures, such as additional hard disks or a reliable broadband Internet connection.


I agree with your views. But the quoted sentence is unclear and so needs editing. If a computer has a hard disk failure, surely the owner is going to have to resort to "additional expenditures" -- a new hard disk.

Re: How to create bootable back-up disk for OS X Lion?
MG2009 #18375 10/15/11 02:30 AM
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Confirmed, against what the posters have alleged!


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Re: How to create bootable back-up disk for OS X Lion?
artie505 #18418 10/15/11 07:53 PM
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Originally Posted By: artie505
How do you access Internet Recovery (which sounds like the missing piece in the puzzle)?
The same way you access Recovery HD: press command-R during startup. If the machine shipped after Lion was publicly available, and a Recovery HD partition cannot be found, the computer automatically does Internet Recovery instead.

From OS X Lion: About Lion Recovery:
Quote:
If you happen to encounter a situation in which you cannot start from the Recovery HD, such as your hard drive stopped responding or you installed a new hard drive without Mac OS X installed, new Mac models introduced after public availability of OS X Lion automatically use the Lion Internet Recovery feature if the Recovery HD (Command-R method above) doesn't work. Lion Internet Recovery lets you start your Mac directly from Apple's Servers. The system runs a quick test of your memory and hard drive to ensure there are no hardware issues.

Lion Internet Recovery presents a limited interface at first, with only the ability to select your preferred Wi-Fi network and, if needed, enter the WPA passphrase. Next, Lion Internet Recovery will download and start from a Recovery HD image. From there, you are offered all the same utilities and functions described above.


Re: How to create bootable back-up disk for OS X Lion?
ganbustein #18419 10/15/11 08:16 PM
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Originally Posted By: ganbustein

What I did was use SuperDuper to clone the InstallESD.dmg image onto my TM backup. (When SuperDuper makes a clone, it will carefully step around any TM backup on the destination volume, leaving it unscathed. The result is a single volume that is both a TM backup and a Lion Install disk.)

That makes your TM backup bootable. It doesn't boot into your latest (or indeed, any) snapshot. It boots into the Lion installer. One of the install options is to recover from a TM backup.

I took the time to test this thoroughly. It can install Lion onto a blank disk, and then use Migration Assistant to recover user files. Or it can restore any particular TM snapshot onto any volume, even a blank one. If the snapshot you restore from was from when you were running Snow Leopard, it (the Lion installer!) will happily reinstall that copy of Snow Leopard. If the snapshot you restore from was from when you were running Lion, and you're restoring onto a blank volume, it'll happily carve out and initialize a matching Recovery HD partition adjacent to that volume. (And, if you're restoring Snow Leopard to a partition that already has Lion on it, it'll reclaim that Recovery HD partition, reabsorbing it into the now-Snow Leopard partition.

In short, it just works, doing whatever you want in the way you would expect it to work.

Now, admittedly, if your main drive has died, you won't be able to restore onto it. You'll have to buy a new drive to replace the dead one, but that's just the way it is. You can't really fault Apple for that.

And, the fact that you still can't just boot from your backup disk and be up and running, without the delay of restoring onto a new disk, is also to be expected, if you think about it. A bootable clone is a useful kind of backup to have, but you'd be insane to rely on that as your only backup. The moment you actually boot off your only backup, you have no backup, and running without a backup is just crazy. Even if you have a bootable backup, the only thing you're going to do with it in an emergency is to immediately clone it again, and we're talking about the same delay as if you restored from any other kind of backup.


But of course, you wouldn't rely on only one method. You'd use #1 and #2 and #3 and:

Option #4: Internet Recovery. If your machine shipped with Lion, then it has in firmware sufficient recovery logic to establish an internet connection and net-boot off a recovery partition on one of Apple's servers. From there, you can install the latest version of Lion, even onto a completely blank disk. It'll even initialize the disk for you, in case it's not already GPT/HFS+(Journaled), and re-create the Recovery HD partition, so you won't have to use Internet Recovery every time.


this would be a great sticky post! It addresses the situation in a way that many could take advantage of.

a question though: could you do the same sort of clone with Carbon Copy Cloner?


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Re: How to create bootable back-up disk for OS X Lion?
tacit #18420 10/15/11 08:42 PM
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Originally Posted By: tacit
But I'm not an average user. You're not an average user. To an average user, what you've just said is "If your computer does not come with installation media, that means you need to buy another hard drive, then find disk cloning software and use it."

Yes, that's exactly what I tell all my computer-buying friends, even the ones whose computers do come with installation media. I tell them that if they don't back up, they will lose everything they have on the computer. I enumerate all the things they have (photos, music, essays, PhD Theses, mail, art, etc., putting extra emphasis on those things that user does with their computer).

And then I tell them that, if they come to me asking how to recover something, I will ask where their backup is. I tell them in advance that if they don't have a backup, I will laugh in their face and chortle "I told you so! I told you so!" And I emphasize that that is all I will do. I will not invest time trying to recover something they didn't think was worth backing up.

I even had to actually follow through on that threat with one friend, who is an IT professional and should know better, but he didn't bother to back up the family computer, despite my sternest admonitions. Later, when his daughter's computer went on the fritz, she came to me and said "Here's my computer. Here's what it's doing. Here's my backup. Help me, Obiwan." The message does get out.

Originally Posted By: tacit
Yes, a backup hard disk is a good thing to have. No, a requirement to purchase and then learn how to use a backup disk and cloning software is not in my mind an acceptable substitute for shipping a computer with installation media.

What "learning". You buy a drive, you plug it in, Time Machine says "May I use it?", you say "Yes", and you're done. (I tell them to buy two backup drives and SuperDuper, and back up both ways. For most users, that's enough.)

For most users, even if they have installation discs, they can't find them. Believe me, finding a backup is much easier than finding those worthless round flat shiny things that came in the box, or the accompanying unimportant scraps of paper with words like "Warranty" and "User Guide" printed on them. What's the use of shipping install discs for the much more than 80% of users who will simply misplace or discard them?

Originally Posted By: tacit
If a person buys a computer, I believe that person should have the ability to start that computer in the event of a hard disk failure without resorting to additional expenditures, such as additional hard disks or a reliable broadband Internet connection.

Oh, c'mon. Get real. That's like saying that if a person buys a computer that person should be able to use that computer forever, confident that it will never break down. Of course things break. Of course you have to pay for the replacement. And of course you sometimes need to pay for the replacement before the original breaks. That's why we have words like "insurance" and "warranty" in the language.

It's like saying that a person who buys a car should never have to replace the tires or re-fill the gas tank or change the oil. Extras like parking permits should be thrown in automatically. If the car does break down, they should still be able to drive it while it's in the shop getting repaired. Why should you need to arrange alternate transportation or pay for roadside assistance if you've already bought a car? Isn't that what the car is for?

Re: How to create bootable back-up disk for OS X Lion?
roger #18422 10/15/11 09:22 PM
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Originally Posted By: roger
a question though: could you do the same sort of clone with Carbon Copy Cloner?

As I understand it, no. Carbon Copy Cloner will not preserve the existing TM backup on the destination volume. I don't use CCC, but I notice they recently added an option to preserve top-level items on the destination. That might suffice, but the same manual says CCC will not copy a TM backup from the source, and will erase one from the destination. Those (erasing TM and preserving top-level items) are contradictory assertions, so I dunno. I chose SuperDuper over CCC right after Leopard first came out, partly because SD played nicely with TM from the get-go, and CCC still tries to ignore it.

(The Lion-compatible version of SD was delayed about a month after Leopard was released, largely because it took lots of testing to make sure it worked with TM and hard-linked directories and all the other Leopard innovations. CCC chose to wimp out instead, sweeping all that exotica under the rug in order to get an earlier release. The real reason I chose SD was this attention to detail. He wouldn't release it until it handled everything perfectly, not merely the ordinary cases.)

The asr command-line tool used to be able to do file-level copies that would preserve existing files on the destination, but the man page (at least on 10.7.2) says the --erase option is now mandatory.

I think you might be able to cobble together the same effect using ditto (to copy all the files) followed by bless to make the volume bootable.

Feel free to experiment with any disposable TM backup you have lying around.

Re: How to create bootable back-up disk for OS X Lion?
ganbustein #18423 10/15/11 09:54 PM
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Originally Posted By: ganbustein
Originally Posted By: tacit
If a person buys a computer, I believe that person should have the ability to start that computer in the event of a hard disk failure without resorting to additional expenditures, such as additional hard disks or a reliable broadband Internet connection.

Oh, c'mon. Get real. That's like saying that if a person buys a computer that person should be able to use that computer forever, confident that it will never break down.

It's like saying that a person who buys a car should never have to replace the tires or re-fill the gas tank or change the oil. Extras like parking permits should be thrown in automatically. If the car does break down, they should still be able to drive it while it's in the shop getting repaired. Why should you need to arrange alternate transportation or pay for roadside assistance if you've already bought a car? Isn't that what the car is for?

While amusing, all these comparisons are arguably and increasingly over the top for the situation the OP finds himself in. We are trying to establish the remedies that require a minimum outlay of additional expense compared with other users who can utilize broadband connections in lieu of OS Install discs. Most of what you say (barring the hyperbole) may be true, but it is still not germane to the issue at hand. Only when it has been established that the prevailing limitations set by the OP cannot be circumvented without additional expense do most of the suggestions made come into play.

The question remains: have all minimal options available to the OP been listed?


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Re: How to create bootable back-up disk for OS X Lion?
alternaut #18427 10/15/11 10:27 PM
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Originally Posted By: alternaut
While amusing, all these comparisons are arguably and increasingly over the top for the situation the OP finds himself in. We are trying to establish the remedies that require a minimum outlay of additional expense compared with other users who can utilize broadband connections in lieu of OS Install discs. Most of what you say (barring the hyperbole) may be true, but it is still not germane to the issue at hand. Only when it has been established that the prevailing limitations set by the OP cannot be circumvented without additional expense do most of the suggestions made come into play.

The question remains: have all minimal options available to the OP been listed?

The post I was replying to said: A person who buys a computer without installation media should not need to back up.

My answer was: Yeah, they should, just like people who do have installation media.

The post I was replying to said: Users need installation media, because 80% of of them are incapable of making backups.

My answer was: Far more than 80% of users are unable to find whatever installation media their computers came with.


As for the OP's needs, the problem there is lack of bandwidth (and, apparently, lack of interest in actually solving the problem when it's so much more fun to rant). Apple has addressed the bandwidth issue by allowing bandwidth-challenged users to bring the computer to an Apple Store and use their bandwidth.

But the OP also needs to back up. Apple will help restore the system software, but the OP's data is the OP's responsibility, and I don't think there are any alternatives to that. Backing up means buying media to back up to. I don't see any alternative to that, either.

Re: How to create bootable back-up disk for OS X Lion?
ganbustein #18430 10/15/11 11:35 PM
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I fully understand what in which post you were responding to, and that is appreciated, as are your posts here in general. My reply above was merely intended to focus things on the OP query, and perhaps use what you and others have contributed in an attempt to generate a summary of options.

Your comment re Apple Store appears not to be a viable option; as he mentioned elsewhere in these forums, it would take the OP at least a full day to implement. All other points you brought up I more or less agree with, although I doubt grelber prefers ranting over a quiet computing routine. laugh


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Re: How to create bootable back-up disk for OS X Lion?
ganbustein #18433 10/16/11 12:31 AM
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Originally Posted By: ganbustein
Originally Posted By: artie505
How do you access Internet Recovery (which sounds like the missing piece in the puzzle)?
The same way you access Recovery HD: press command-R during startup. If the machine shipped after Lion was publicly available, and a Recovery HD partition cannot be found, the computer automatically does Internet Recovery instead.

From OS X Lion: About Lion Recovery:
Quote:
If you happen to encounter a situation in which you cannot start from the Recovery HD, such as your hard drive stopped responding or you installed a new hard drive without Mac OS X installed, new Mac models introduced after public availability of OS X Lion automatically use the Lion Internet Recovery feature if the Recovery HD (Command-R method above) doesn't work. Lion Internet Recovery lets you start your Mac directly from Apple's Servers. The system runs a quick test of your memory and hard drive to ensure there are no hardware issues.

Lion Internet Recovery presents a limited interface at first, with only the ability to select your preferred Wi-Fi network and, if needed, enter the WPA passphrase. Next, Lion Internet Recovery will download and start from a Recovery HD image. From there, you are offered all the same utilities and functions described above.

Thanks for the details; they solve all but the bandwidth problem.


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In Memory of Harv: Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. ~Voltaire
Re: How to create bootable back-up disk for OS X Lion?
tacit #18436 10/16/11 01:51 AM
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Originally Posted By: artie505
A bit off-topic, perhaps, but totally pertinent... You've never told us how that Dell Inspiron episode ended.

Did they come through with media?

Just remembered this: Apple Hardware Test stashed on new macs (I guess?)

Quote:
This is a problem for some Windows computers, which ship with a "recovery partition" on the hard drive that you can use to reinstall Windows, but do not come with a set of Windows CDs. One of my sweeties had a cheap Dell that shipped this way, and her hard drive failed; replacing it was easy, but the replacement didn't have the "recovery partition," so Dell made her pony up $$ to get the recovery CDs so she could re-install Windows.

That's simply unacceptable...as unacceptable as Apple's advising people to bother their friends, relatives, and employers for broadband access.

Apple can proclaim itself "the" setter of standards and deprecate FireWire, modems/faxing, even (as rumor has it) optical drives, but they simply cannot take it upon themselves to deprecate a means of Internet access that is used by a significant number (even if it's only a small percentage) of people.

Last edited by artie505; 10/16/11 01:53 AM. Reason: Add quote

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Re: How to create bootable back-up disk for OS X Lion?
artie505 #18437 10/16/11 02:25 AM
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This thread raises the awkward question of just who came up with the idea of no longer including system software installation media with Macintosh computers, and who approved it, or decided at the very least not to oppose it.


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Re: How to create bootable back-up disk for OS X Lion?
artie505 #18438 10/16/11 04:05 AM
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Quote:
...they simply cannot take it upon themselves to deprecate a means of Internet access that is used by a significant number (even if it's only a small percentage) of people.

Why on earth not?

This is the company whose phenomenal resurgence, dating from the return of Steve Jobs, has been marked by the continuous deprecation of things used by significant percentages of its customers: floppy drives, ADB, SCSI, the Motorola 68000 processor family, OS 9 bootability, the PPC processor family, OS 9 emulation, optical drives (MacBook Air and the latest Mac mini), keyboards and removable batteries (iPhone and iPad), etc. ad nauseum.

You may not like all or even any of these forced obsolescences, but the fact is that Apple, simply, can discontinue catering to those on dialup. Indeed, they already have: Macs haven't shipped with internal modems in over five years.

grelber is free to choose not to join the broadband mainstream, but if there's a solution to be found to the dilemma of how to keep a broadband-era Mac up to date with dial-up tools, it won't be induced via sermonizing.



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Re: How to create bootable back-up disk for OS X Lion?
ganbustein #18461 10/17/11 12:00 AM
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Originally Posted By: ganbustein
Originally Posted By: roger
a question though: could you do the same sort of clone with Carbon Copy Cloner?

As I understand it, no. Carbon Copy Cloner will not preserve the existing TM backup on the destination volume. I don't use CCC, but I notice they recently added an option to preserve top-level items on the destination. That might suffice, but the same manual says CCC will not copy a TM backup from the source, and will erase one from the destination. Those (erasing TM and preserving top-level items) are contradictory assertions, so I dunno. I chose SuperDuper over CCC right after Leopard first came out, partly because SD played nicely with TM from the get-go, and CCC still tries to ignore it.

(The Lion-compatible version of SD was delayed about a month after Leopard was released, largely because it took lots of testing to make sure it worked with TM and hard-linked directories and all the other Leopard innovations. CCC chose to wimp out instead, sweeping all that exotica under the rug in order to get an earlier release. The real reason I chose SD was this attention to detail. He wouldn't release it until it handled everything perfectly, not merely the ordinary cases.)

The asr command-line tool used to be able to do file-level copies that would preserve existing files on the destination, but the man page (at least on 10.7.2) says the --erase option is now mandatory.

I think you might be able to cobble together the same effect using ditto (to copy all the files) followed by bless to make the volume bootable.

Feel free to experiment with any disposable TM backup you have lying around.


thank you!


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Re: How to create bootable back-up disk for OS X Lion?
grelber #18468 10/17/11 04:13 AM
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Just to put a bit of perspective on the direction in which this thread has spun, what is your d/l speed with your dial-up connection...how many Kbps?


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In Memory of Harv: Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. ~Voltaire
Re: How to create bootable back-up disk for OS X Lion?
artie505 #18469 10/17/11 06:24 AM
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Originally Posted By: artie505
A bit off-topic, perhaps, but totally pertinent... You've never told us how that Dell Inspiron episode ended.

Did they come through with media?


After multiple phone calls, each as frustrating as the one before it, and repeated escalations to higher-level support people, they eventually shipped out an install DVD that contained a Windows installer. The computer eventually became usable again, about three weeks after I replaced the hard drive.

That was a nightmare of its own; replacing the hard drive in that model Inspiron laptop involved a complete disassembly of the entire laptop, up to and including removing the motherboard; the hard drive was located *beneath* the motherboard. But that's a whole 'nother rant.

Originally Posted By: RHV
I agree with your views. But the quoted sentence is unclear and so needs editing. If a computer has a hard disk failure, surely the owner is going to have to resort to "additional expenditures" -- a new hard disk.


Granted.

However, if one is to accept the notion that a backup hard drive with a cloned OS on it is an acceptable substitute for install media, one must accept the notion that it is necessary to walk out of the store when one first purchases a computer with an additional hard drive.

Originally Posted By: ganbustein
Oh, c'mon. Get real. That's like saying that if a person buys a computer that person should be able to use that computer forever, confident that it will never break down. Of course things break. Of course you have to pay for the replacement. And of course you sometimes need to pay for the replacement before the original breaks. That's why we have words like "insurance" and "warranty" in the language.


You were doing well right up to that point. Comparing shipping install media with using a computer forever, however, is absurd. Absolutely silly.

To borrow your car analogy: Nowadays, many cars come with RFID "keys" and remote door locks. However, these cars still have physical keys and physical door locks, too. They do that in case the radio system fails or the car's battery runs down. If you have power door locks and no physical key, if the battery runs down you can't get into the car.

A reinstall CD is like that physical key. Sure, you never need to stick the key in the door lock when things are working. But if the car battery runs down, and your car dealer decided to save money by giving you only a remote and no physical key, you're locked out of your car with no way in save a locksmith (or, I suppose, breaking a window or something). That is not reasonable. And making a computer unable to boot if the hard drive fails is also not reasonable.

Originally Posted By: ganbustein
Apple has addressed the bandwidth issue by allowing bandwidth-challenged users to bring the computer to an Apple Store and use their bandwidth.


Sure, if you live in an urban area near an Apple store.

There are many states in which there is either exactly one Apple store or no Apple stores. Kansas, Iowa, Arkansas, Maine, and New Mexico each have only one Apple store. Look at New Mexico, for example; the state covers 121,355 square miles...and has only one Apple store. How many miles do you believe it's reasonable to drive to an Apple store? And pity the poor people in Montana, South Dakota, West Virginia, Wyoming, and Vermont, which have no Apple stores at all.What good is Apple's offer then?

Why not include installation media? What's the compelling argument against it?


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Re: How to create bootable back-up disk for OS X Lion?
artie505 #18471 10/17/11 09:43 AM
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Originally Posted By: artie505
Just to put a bit of perspective on the direction in which this thread has spun, what is your d/l speed with your dial-up connection...how many Kbps?


The best estimate I can give is based on my download meter, which usually indicates somewhere between 4.0 and 5.1 Kbps.
As noted elsewhere, Apple estimated a 435MB download (OS 10.7.2 update*) to take 27 hours.
* When I went to the Apple support site on another computer, it stated that the size of the download was 768MB; I don't know why the discrepancy.

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