As noted elsewhere, Recovery HD is an integral part of Lion. But even Pogue (p 850) recommends restoring from TM backup: "If your Mac is really hosed, this is the option you want. It restores your entire software world — programs, data, settings, Mac OS X itself ...."
That's the primary reason I chose the route I did. Who wants/needs an outdated OS X system which has none of the carefully 'engineered' personality that you put into it? With TM backup restoration, you get exactly what you want.
And do the math: $70 OS X thumb drive with 10.7.x vs $100 backup drive. The latter provides peace of mind; the former gets dated really fast.
Sure...
Except for the fact that you can't use Time Machine to reinstall a
pristine Lion (other than as described by ganbustein, but that's useless in your instance) as I like to do on occasion when things begin to feel sluggish. And don't forget that along with your
"carefully 'engineered' personality," TM also reinstalls the accumulated detritus of your usage.
And further, depending on how and why your installation got hosed, TM may do no better than reinstall a disaster that's about to happen or, if you go back a bit farther, the underpinnings of that disaster, so you may, in fact, have to go so far back to get a good TM restoration that much of your
"carefully 'engineered' personality" is lost.
Actually, a clean install combined with judicious use of Migration Assistant and/or FireWire target disk mode (to access
cloned data) may be an equally complete and better solution than a TM restoration.
Sure... I agree that TM is a great gift, but I don't accept it as the panacea you seem to think it is.
And as I've already said (Post #19009),
"$ for $, grelber's Time Machine route is a better one than blowing $69 on a thumb drive."
