Need help creating Mountain Lion Recovery Disk
I am at wits end on how difficult and unreasonable it is to get a copy of Mountain Lion after I paid for it.?! 
Here is the deal...
I hope to buy a new 13" MacBook Pro next week.
I already have a Seagate 7200RPM, 750GB drive I want to use.
I have been told by Apple and others, that since I will have a bare HDD in my new MacBook Pro, that the only way to get Mountain Lion is to download it or go into an Apple Store and have them install it for me.
What I want is a "Recovery DVD" or "Recovery USB" so I can rebuild my machine anytime I want...
I am away from home, and I do NOT want to use UNSECURE Free Wi-Fi to try and download a 4.4GB dmg file?! 
And I am not crazy about having to use 4.4 GB of my 6 GB/month AT&T Data Plan to get a copy either, because that equates to about $50!!!!
When I called Apple today, the tech insisted that if I went into an Apple Store, they would not only download the Mountain Lion dmg for free, BUT that they HAD TO INSTALL IT (versus leaving the .dmg file as-is so I can create my "Recovery DVD"...)
There has to be a better way to do all of this...
Finally, security is VERY IMPORTANT to me, so doing things like connecting to Apple's Servers over a free connection at McDonalds is a mega no-no!!
Sincerely,
Debbie
Comments
You just have to download the installer using the Mac App Store and image it onto an external of some kind:
http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13727_7-57479690-263/how-to-create-an-os-x-10.8-mountain-lion-install-drive/
I think you option-click things to be able to download them again after they are installed but check if the installer is still on your drive. If you got the machine with it installed, you have to buy the standalone one because your computer only has a single use license but it's only $20.
Another option is to keep a bootable clone of your system using say Carbon Copy Cloner or Superduper. That won't allow you to do a factory reset unless you cloned a system right after installing but it's a good enough for a recovery drive and in many ways better than an installer because it allows you to boot up and continue working.
But my #1 concern is being forced to download Mountain Lion over a free wi-fi connection which I consider to be unsecure.
What would stop someone from doing a Man-in-the-Middle attack, changing packets, and maybe installing a "Back Door"?!
I could use my new AT&T Hotspot, but I only get 6GB/month, and using 4.4GB for the Mountain Lion download would equate to around a $50 download!!!
I called Apple and asked if I went to an Apple Store if they could securely download it for me on my new Seagate HDD, but not install it, and I was told, "No!"
No sure if I am following you.
If I buy this new MacBook Pro with Mountain Lion on it and some 5400RPM 750GB drive, and I "cloned" it before ever using it with either CCC or SuperDuper, then...
1.) Would said clone work on the Seagate 7200RPM 750GB HDD that I will be installing?
2.) If I ever had to do a "recovery" because I changed HDD's again, or had a crash, would that "clone" from the factory Apple HDD work on other HDD's the same size?
3.) How would that compare to me somehow dowloading Mountain Lion from Apple and creating a "Recovery DVD" or "Recovery USB Drive"? In other words, what are the benefits of that over a "clone"?
All of this just seems super complicated from the days when I had a Snow leopard DVD and could rebuid my laptop as much as I wanted?!
Also, I am concerned - a surprise I know!! - about moving forward...
Once I have Business Data and other things needed to access my Server, I will *never* hand over my MacBook to anyone at Apple! NEVER!!
Sooooo, I need to be sure that I do whatever I need from day 1, so that if I need to swap out HDD's later on, or have corruption issues, that I have some *secure* way to rebuild my MacBook myself without any techs touching it or any data that might be on it.
Demanding, I know, but hey, this is my business and my life!!
Sincerely,
Debbie
That would be one hell of an achievement to be able to pull that off. The installer comes down as a disk image so it's a single file. If any of it got modified, the disk image wouldn't be usable. It's safe enough to download that over an unsecured wifi connection. Your App Store id might be sent in the clear but I think they fixed this recently.
Yes the clone would work on the new drive, that's actually the fastest way to setup another drive as you aren't having to do a factory install from scratch.
Yes, it only clones the used space and even if the used space is higher than the new drive, you can choose to exclude files.
A recovery disk will allow you to reinstall the system without affecting the rest of the files. It's harder to do that with a clone but a clone is more useful for diagnosing problems because it's a working system so you boot it up and run it like your normal drive. If you keep a clone up to date, if anything happened with your internal drive, you can boot up from the external and continue as normal. If your internal drive physically broke, a recovery disk wouldn't help and you'd lose all the data on it.
I'd rather have a cloned system than a recovery disk because I could do more using the clone like go online. You can have both though, like I say downloading the disk image over free wifi will be ok.
Okay.
How much does CCC or SuperDuper cost? And would you recommend one over the other?
BTW, what is the general process to "clone" a drive?
What all would I need?
And I assume I would want to clone things BEFORE turning on FileVault 2, right?
Good to know.
Is it possible to "clone" my new MacBook Pro but save the "clone" to a DVD or a Thumbdrive? (I'm on the road, and space is limited - as funny as that may sound - and another reason I'm grouchy about not having a "Recovery DVD" is that it is much less likely to get broken, crushed, corrupted or whatever versus a HDD siting in the back of my car in the heat or cold...)
So you are kinda convincing me that making a clone would possibly "kill two birds with one stone"?!
And if I made a clone, I could do it for free - less the price of the cloning software - versus the hassle of downloading it or whatever.
Would it be fair to assume, that if I get a new MacBook, make a clone, and then later need a "Recovery DVD/USB", that I could get it from Apple in a similar way as I would from day 1?
Thanks,
Debbie
CCC used to be free but is now $40 and Superduper is $28. I recommend CCC though as it has the ability to backup and recreate the recovery partition, Superduper doesn't.
It wouldn't matter if you enabled it before or after. CCC will copy the unencrypted data over. If you plan to keep the clone updated, you should encrypt the external but it would be a good idea to enable the encryption when booted from the external as described here:
http://help.bombich.com/kb/advanced-strategies/the-disk-center#fde
It is possible to use DVDs or a Thumb drive. For the DVD, you'd probably just clone to a disk image and then burn that but it might not recognise it as bootable and DVDs are really slow. A USB pen would be better but they aren't great for running an OS from either. You'd be better with an SSD:
http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-Series-120GB-internal-MZ-7TD120BW/dp/B009NHAF06
They aren't susceptible to getting knocked around and booting from one over USB 3 would actually be faster than the internal hard drive.
Yeah, you can make a recovery disk at any point. Say for example, you got the Macbook, made a clone and sometime in the future, something other than a physical drive failure prevented you booting your machine, you can boot from the clone. If it can't repair the problem, you can use the clone to download the image to make a recovery drive.
Where is the best place to buy CCC?
And how is the documentation that - presumably - comes with it?
To be honest, all of this "cloning" and "boot disks" and "encryption" and so on is making my head spin?!
(Sorry to say, but all of these concepts are new to me, and combined seem rather complicated.)
I am hoping that some of this makes more sense when I have things in front of me...
Sincerely,
Debbie
On their website under the purchase tab:
http://www.bombich.com
It's really straightforward to use. You just pick internal drive as source and external as destination, choose the backup option from the dropdown and hit clone. They have a whole support section if you have problems:
http://help.bombich.com
Thanks for all of the help and insight!!
(I'm going to kick all of this stuff around for a week or so, and then hopefully implement things!)
Sincerely,
Debbie