How to Use Apple's New Recovery Disc Assistant Utility to Create a Bootable Flash Drive

Hey everyone today I'm going to show you how you can use the recovery disc assistant utility that Apple just released to create a recovery disc from a USB hard drive or flash drive. So this is a new utility that Apple just released and it's only about a megabyte and here's the download page so to download this in instead of following this link here I've set up a shortened link for you and that is tr. us/ lion recovery. So all you need is this file as well as a flash drive or hard drive with at least 1 gigabyte of space on it.

Once you download the file, you can see right here the recovery disc assistant disc image. I'm going to open that up and inside it you should see the recovery disc assistant application. And then of course, you're going to have to agree to a license agreement. Here you can see all the discs that are available for you to use. Just a word of warning, as it says right here any information on the selected disk will be erased.

I'm just going to choose the 2 GB flash drive that I installed. You're going to want to make sure it's in the correct format before you do this. I found that you have to have it in the Mac OS extended Journal format in order for this to work. So, to make sure that you have it in that format, you can just go into your applications folder and into utilities and from there you can go to Disk Utility and in Disk Utility you're going to want to select your disk and just because there'll be nothing on it anyways you can go right ahead and erase it using the format Mac OS extended Journal. If you choose something like MS DOS fat, you're not going to get it to work for you and you're going to get an error message.

So from there I'm just going to choose this disk and I'm going to have to enter my password in. Now it's going to create a recovery disc this is just going to take a couple of minutes, it shouldn't take too long. Now one other thing to note when you plug this flash drive into your computer after the disc is created, you're not going to see anything come up unless you go into Disk Utility. This is because now it is a recovery disk and and the files in it are not accessible unless you start it up as the main disk.

Now, let's talk about how to use this new recovery disc assistant utility. So once you have created your recovery disc, you're going to want to insert it into your computer and then restart it. When your computer starts up, hold down the option key so that it doesn't recognize the hard drive by default. Then, wait for the startup time until the menu comes up and here you can see the drives that are connected to your computer. I have the Macintosh HD which is my main internal hard drive then the recovery HD partition that's automatically installed with lion and then last here here's my external recovery HD drive.

I'm just going to use my arrow keys to select it and hit enter to load it so the recovery partition will boot for a little while. And at that point, you should see this menu which gives you a couple of different options. You can restore from a time machine backup, reinstall OS X, get help online or go to Disk Utility. Also, you get the typical utilities that you'd get on an install CD such as the firmware password utility network utility and terminal.

So there you go that's how you can use the new lion recovery disc assistant to make yourself a bootable flash drive that boots into the recovery software so that you can reinstall OS X. As always, if you have any questions about Mac or iOS, please send me an email and I'll try to do a video howto on them as soon as I can.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhey everyone today I'm going to show you how you can use the recovery disc assistant utility that Apple just released to create a recovery disc from a USB hard drive or flash drive so this is a new utility that Apple just released and it's only about a megabyte and here's the download page so to download this in instead of following this link here I've set up a shortened link for you and that is tr. us/ lion recovery so all you need is this file as well as a flash drive or hard drive with at least 1 gigabyte of space on it so from there once you download the file you can see right here the recovery dis assistant disc image and I'm going to open that up and inside it you should see the recovery dis assistant application and then of course you're going to have to agree to a license agreement and here you can see all the discs that are available for you to use now just a word of warning uh as it says right here any information on the selected disk will be erased so I'm just going to choose the 2 GB flash drive that I installed and you're going to want to make sure it's in the correct format before you do this and I found that you have to have it in the Mac OS extended Journal format in order for this to work so to make sure that you have it in that format you can just go into your applications folder and into utilities and from there you can go to Disk Utility and in dis utility you're going to want to select your disk and just because there'll be nothing on it anyways you can go right ahead and erase it using the format Mac OS extended Journal if you choose something like MS DOS fat you're not going to get it to work for you and you're going to get an error message so from there I'm just going to choose this dis and I'm going to have to enter my password in and now it's going to create recovery disc this is just going to take a couple minutes it shouldn't take too long now one other thing to note when you plug this flash drive into your computer after the dis is created you're not going to see anything come up unless you go into Disk Utility this is because now it is a recovery dis and and the files in it are not accessible unless you start it up as the main dis as I'll show you in a minute so now you can see here that the Mac OS 10 line recovery Drive was created successfully and it says here gives you some instructions to use the recovery disc connect the USB drive with the recovery disc restart your computer while holding down the option key and then select the recovery disc I'm going to show you how to do that now uh but what I wanted to say is the main point of this disc is not just to have a flat FL Drive laying around with this on it but as if your internal hard drive would fail you would not be able to access the recovery partition that is built onto the disc so this is kind of just a safeguard in case that would happen so I'll show you how to start it up from this disc so I have the finished USB drive inserted into my computer at this point and my computer is off and what I'm going to do is I'm going to turn that back on my computer and then hold down the option key so I'm going to wait for the startup time then hold down the option key otherwise it won't recognize the key press so now you'll see this menu come up and here you can see the drives that are connected to your computer so I have the Macintosh HD which is my main internal hard drive then the recovery HD partition that's automatically installed with lion and then last here here's my external recovery HD drive so I'm just going to use my arrow keys to select it and hit enter to load it so the recovery partition will boot for a little while and at then you should see this menu which gives you a couple different options restoring from a time machine backup reinstalling OS 10 getting help online or going to Disk Utility you also get the typical utilities that you'd get on an install CD such as the firmware password utility Network utility and terminal so there you go that's how you can use the new lion recovery disc assistant to make yourself a bootable flash drive that boots into the recovery software so that you can reinstall Mac OS 10 and as always if you have any questions about Mac or iOS please send me an email and I'll try to do a video howto on them as soon as I can I hope you found this video useful and thank you for watchinghey everyone today I'm going to show you how you can use the recovery disc assistant utility that Apple just released to create a recovery disc from a USB hard drive or flash drive so this is a new utility that Apple just released and it's only about a megabyte and here's the download page so to download this in instead of following this link here I've set up a shortened link for you and that is tr. us/ lion recovery so all you need is this file as well as a flash drive or hard drive with at least 1 gigabyte of space on it so from there once you download the file you can see right here the recovery dis assistant disc image and I'm going to open that up and inside it you should see the recovery dis assistant application and then of course you're going to have to agree to a license agreement and here you can see all the discs that are available for you to use now just a word of warning uh as it says right here any information on the selected disk will be erased so I'm just going to choose the 2 GB flash drive that I installed and you're going to want to make sure it's in the correct format before you do this and I found that you have to have it in the Mac OS extended Journal format in order for this to work so to make sure that you have it in that format you can just go into your applications folder and into utilities and from there you can go to Disk Utility and in dis utility you're going to want to select your disk and just because there'll be nothing on it anyways you can go right ahead and erase it using the format Mac OS extended Journal if you choose something like MS DOS fat you're not going to get it to work for you and you're going to get an error message so from there I'm just going to choose this dis and I'm going to have to enter my password in and now it's going to create recovery disc this is just going to take a couple minutes it shouldn't take too long now one other thing to note when you plug this flash drive into your computer after the dis is created you're not going to see anything come up unless you go into Disk Utility this is because now it is a recovery dis and and the files in it are not accessible unless you start it up as the main dis as I'll show you in a minute so now you can see here that the Mac OS 10 line recovery Drive was created successfully and it says here gives you some instructions to use the recovery disc connect the USB drive with the recovery disc restart your computer while holding down the option key and then select the recovery disc I'm going to show you how to do that now uh but what I wanted to say is the main point of this disc is not just to have a flat FL Drive laying around with this on it but as if your internal hard drive would fail you would not be able to access the recovery partition that is built onto the disc so this is kind of just a safeguard in case that would happen so I'll show you how to start it up from this disc so I have the finished USB drive inserted into my computer at this point and my computer is off and what I'm going to do is I'm going to turn that back on my computer and then hold down the option key so I'm going to wait for the startup time then hold down the option key otherwise it won't recognize the key press so now you'll see this menu come up and here you can see the drives that are connected to your computer so I have the Macintosh HD which is my main internal hard drive then the recovery HD partition that's automatically installed with lion and then last here here's my external recovery HD drive so I'm just going to use my arrow keys to select it and hit enter to load it so the recovery partition will boot for a little while and at then you should see this menu which gives you a couple different options restoring from a time machine backup reinstalling OS 10 getting help online or going to Disk Utility you also get the typical utilities that you'd get on an install CD such as the firmware password utility Network utility and terminal so there you go that's how you can use the new lion recovery disc assistant to make yourself a bootable flash drive that boots into the recovery software so that you can reinstall Mac OS 10 and as always if you have any questions about Mac or iOS please send me an email and I'll try to do a video howto on them as soon as I can I hope you found this video useful and thank you for watching\n"