Encrypted Live System on USB-thumb drive

Hey all,
I am fed up with the different systems on various computers. So I want an Arch Linux Live System on an USB thumb drive I can carry around and plug into the computers I stumble upon.
I want to be able to have some data (emails, favourites and so on) and some additional programs (vlc, Open Office, ...) on the live system so I can use them. And there are the upgrades for Arch I don't want to mis
As I am known to lose small things, thumb drives, I want to encrypt that system.
I have already an Arch install running on my PC and I would like to stick to Arch. Will Arch be able to adapt to various different PCs? I was thinking about using Ubuntu, because it will run on almost anything but, well it's not Arch...
I would like to have at least two partitions:
- One encrypted Live System where I can store personal data
- One partition where I can store other information and which I can read from any Linux/Win32 computer (most probable NTFS)
- Is a Swap Partition usefull or will it just wear down the drive? What can I expect if I don't have a Swap?
So where shall I start? Partitioning the drive?
- Boot sector 150 MB
- Swap 1 GB
- System 5 GB
- Data Rest
Has anybody tried this? Better yet, succeded?
So I have a 16GB thumb drive here waiting for your suggestios!
Thanks!

I don't have it encrypted, but I made a simple version of what you proposed -- 1st half of 8gb drive is NTFS (though I'd consider Vfat after reading up some more). 2nd half is bootable partition w/ Larch install. Works great! Larch takes a bit to figure out, but it's not too hard. No boot or swap parititions.
Good luck!
Scott

Similar Messages

Toshiba's USB Thumb Drive systemic problems.

Toshiba 64GB thumb USB drive [out of the blue] keeps telling me it is WRITE PROTECTED... everytime I try to save a file.. I myself are only user and NEVER write protected anything... HOW DO I GET IT OUT OF WRITE PROTECT MODE ????????????? Serial No. 1129DA0800J2JMK
According to the WEB this is a major problem with Toshiba products. I am a faithful customer I have two of their lap tops so I thought why not buy a Toshiba USB thumb drive. With no warning it just keep telling me it is write protected. I have tried to force a format just to push it back to life but no luck. I have tried to contact Toshiba customer service on their web site and no response. DOES ANYONE KNOW THE SECRET RITUAL TO FORCE IT OUT OF WRITE PROTECTION MODE????????????? Never dropped or abused or left out in the hot sun.. It got this way just lying on the desk. Come on Toshiba... How about some customer service.......

If you still have that thumb drive, try cleaning it with DiskPart. At an elevated command prompt remove the partitions and create a new one. It's something like this. Be sure you identify the correct drive!
DISKPART> list disk
DISKPART> select disk (id)
DISKPART> clean
DISKPART> convert mbr
DISKPART> create partition primary
DISKPART> select part 1
DISKPART> format fs=ntfs
-Jerry

I need a way to get usb thumb-drive securely recognized as a apple keyboard

I posted this question over at Developer Discussions also, just to get more eyes on it, not to be disruptive.
So, I would like to utilize a maximum-length Admin. password (255 characters?) without having to manually type it in each time I login, install/update software, or for any other reason. The perfect situation would be some type of script or software installation onto a USB pen drive (2 gig sony)which is inserted into the macbook (via usb) when the Leopard Login screen appears. It logs me in, then, afterwards, it creates a clickable icon on the desktop that achieves the same goal (entering a long admin password securely). And all of the above is achieved using the built-in security of Keychain access, without having to continuously mount and unmount the drive.
Searching google produces many expensive products that do not fit: Securikey, omnikey, smart cards, tokends, and on and on. They seem to have figured this out at microsoft - not that it matters much, except that it appears to be possible.
One problem is that a USB thumb drive is not mounted until after login, it seems, but, I plugged in a friend's usb apple keyboard from the year 2000 and was able to type in my password at login. And, an email reply elsewhere suggested writing a daemon (that constantly runs in the background of the operating system) that could recognize the drive and accept a script from it that inputs the password and executes the 'enter' command.
I don't know how to write daemons yet, but I can stumble around a bit with bash and applescripts, and I can copy any Xcode project out of a book and make it run properly. I'm a beginner.
This project might create security issues for my operating system, but I'm really not concerned about that because this is a computer I don't rely on and can safely perform experiments on. And I would like to use this as an opportunity to learn - so I'm going to give it a whirl anyway - unless someone has already accomplished something similar. In that case, why reinvent the wheel and plug it into the wall, eh?
Basically I am asking for help. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

You don't need to get deep into programming to do much of this.
launchd, the background process that's responsible for launching most of the background processes on your machine, has the ability to launch a script based on disk mount events.
StartOnMount <boolean>
This optional key causes the job to be started every time a filesystem is
mounted.
So you could create a LaunchDaemon script that watches for a disk mount. When a disk is inserted your script is fired off. You'd need to perform some verification to ensure the disk is, indeed, your USB stick and not some other device, then it can trigger the rest of the login process. Off hand I'd look to osascript to run an AppleScript-based keystroke, but there may be other ways, too.
One big question relates to securing your password. Clearly you can't store it in the script, so you'd have to read it from somewhere. You also can't store it on the USB stick unless you somehow encrypt it (otherwise someone can just look at the files on the USB stick and get your password), but AppleScript can use the keychain, too, although I'm not sure what keys would be available prior to login, so it requires some experimentation.

Prepare an usb thumb drive, to boot windows 7 or 8 in UEFI mode

Purpose of this post:
Prepare an usb thumb drive, to boot windows 7 in UEFI mode and install the system in pure UEFI mode.
Why am I writing this:
I had a hard time finding out how to make a custom installation of windows 7 in pure UEFI mode, and avoid using the factory restore disks. After hours of research, experiments etc I finally got the point and found a solution. And I'm happy to share my research with you. I hope this will be of help. If something is not clear, or more information is needed, I will be glad to explain things further.
History:
As most of you already know, BIOS was developed for PC in early eighties and has remained unchanged in recent years. But, since 2000, Intel started working on a new firmware interface, called Extensible Firmware Interface, abbreviated EFI. And since 2005 United EFI Forum has been handling the responsibility for development, management and promotion of UEFI specifications. Bigger companies like Intel, AMD, Microsoft and Dell have already started to bring out their products in accordance to UEFI standards which has more stable, secure and easier to use interface.
How does UEFI works (in a nutshell):
Once you power on the UEFI based PC, the Pre-EFI is executed which initializes only the CPU, memory and the chipset. This followed by Driver Execution Environment (DEX) where other hardware is initialized.
Advantages of UEFI:
    It can integrate various drivers this will not require to load during booting so saves time.
   PC can connect to network without OS.
   Also integrated drivers allow rendering GUI based control panel which out dates the old school bluish BIOS screen.
   Not all the installed hard drives are scanned as boot drive is set during the installation of OS in UFFI.
   Applications like anti-virus and diagnostic tools can be stored on virtually any non-volatile storage devices attached to a PC.
For a system to boot and install in UEFI the partition table of the HDD should be GPT (GUID Partition Table), not the old school MBR (master boot record). GPT has many advantages, can have virtually an unlimited number of partitions (windows will allow only 128) and impressively big partitions.
Since UEFI has a lot of advantages why not having a system install and boot in UEFI mode? AFAIK new Lenovo notebooks/netbooks are UEFI capable and OS’s are already installed in pure UEFI mode.
So, let’s go now to the point. Do you want to have more control over your HDD? Let say, you have a 320GB HDD and you have divided it in two partitions, one of 50GB, for your Windows 7, and the remaining for your data. If something goes wrong and you need to restore your system to factory default, with the recovery disks, it will wipe your partition scheme, set the system to default and this way your data will be lost.
You may want to make a “vanilla” installation of windows from a USB thumb drive and avoid using factory recovery disks. Now here things get complicated. A standard preparation of the USB with Microsoft’s software (Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool), or other tools, will give you a bios installation, not a UEFI one. So for the system to boot, you will need to change some settings in bios, and changing it from UEFI to legacy bios. The installation will prepare the HDD in MBR partition table, and you will lose all the advantages of UEFI, described above.
Now this can be avoided, by properly preparing an USB to boot and install in UEFI mode. Here are the steps:
Step by step tutorial:
1.   In a windows computer, download a legal copy (although trial) of the windows 7 os. You can do this from here: http://www.mydigitallife.info/official-windows-7-sp1-iso-from-digital-river/
Be sure to download the same version that came preinstalled in your computer. For example, if you have a Lenovo x120e, with a Windows 7 professional, 64bit, download an iso image of the Windows 7 professional 64bit.
2.   Once downloaded burn the iso to a USB thumb (at least 4GB) using Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool.
3.   After preparing this, create a folder on your computer, name it whatever (i.e. W7pro64bit). Go to the root of your USB
and select all the files and folders there (9 in total) copy, and paste to your folder you created, W7pro64bit.
4.   Using windows format the usb again in FAT32. Windows 7 USB/DVD Download tool, formats it in NTFS. We need a FAT32 formatted disk to achieve our goal. Formating again the USB in FAT32 will not touch the MBR of the USB thumbdrive. And after copying back the files (see step 6) the USB will still be bootable. (nice, and simple, isn't it?)
5.   Now go to the folder W7pro64bit and do the following:
a.   Browse to W7pro64bit\sources\ and open install.wim file. It’s a big file, and can be opened as an archive with 7zip (free software). Do not extract it, do not modify it, just browse the file with 7zip. Just to be sure you do not mess with that file, you can copy it somewhere else in your computer, and than procede.
b.   Browse this file (install.wim) to \1\Windows\Boot\EFI\ and locate the file bootmgfw.efi. Do not move, delete it, but just drag that file to the desktop. (if you have copied the file install.wim to another place in your computer, than you are safely do whatever you want with that file ) Close the 7zip program to release the install.wim file.
c.   Rename the file you just copied to the desktop from bootmgfw.efi to bootx64.efi.
d.   Now go back to w7pro64bit folder and browse \efi\Microsoft. Form there copy the folder boot and paste it one level up, on the folder: \efi. It will look like this: \efi\boot.
e.   Now copy the file you saved on your desktop and renamed (bootx64.efi) to \efi\boot (inside the boot folder you copied on step 5d
6.   Now go to the root of the folder W7pro64bit and select all folders and files (9 in total) copy, and paste all those files back to your USB thumb drive. (see step 4 for more info)
7.   Go to the computer that you are going to reinstall, and before restarting it, use the program ABR (activation backup and restore) to backup the license of your windows os. (use google to find ABR). Advanced Tokens Manager (ATM ) is great too. This link may be of help: Backup and restore W7 activation. After the program finishes its magic, it will create a few files inside the folder where the program itself reside. Copy these files to a new folder in your usb. Rename it to ABR so you will quickly find it later. (if you decide to use ATM, the procedure may be a little different. But you are smart enough to figure out how to use it)
8.   Backup to an external storage all your data before continuing.(reminder: are you sure you saved the license as explained in step 7, to a safe place? To a external drive, to another computer? If you are sure, than go on with step 9)
9.   Now restart your laptop, and enter your bios settings. Go to the boot settings, and set the computer to boot in UEFI only. Not both, not UEFI first, or legacy, BUT UEFI only. Save and restart.
10.   Press f12 (or the corresponding key for your machine) to choose the boot device and chose to start from the USB thumb drive with your windows 7 pro 64 bit.
11.   If everything is done correctly, your computer will boot from the USB.
12.   Follow the wizard and choose a custom install, not upgrade. At the disk partition window delete all the partition you see there until you have only one unallocated space.
13.   Select it, and click next to install windows, without making partition in this point. The installer will create a GPT partition table not a MBR since the USB booted in UEFI mode.
14.   Immediately after the first restart remove your USB thumb, and the installation will continue from the HDD. Wait until installation finishes.
15.   When you will be finally on your desktop, on the installed OS plug your USB go to the ABR folder and click on restore.exe. It will restore your license and your copy of windows will be activated.
16.   Now you can go in computer management/disk management and shrink the HDD to create your partitioning scheme. Make sure to leave enough space to your windows os. (30gb or more for extra programs you will install at your choice)
17.      Download from lenovo.com thinkvantage system update and update your system. Windows update too can install all the necessary drivers, if you need only basic drivers support.
Note: if tvsu will fail to work, see this:
http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/ThinkVantage-Technologies/ThinkVantage-System-Update-Servers-down-the-wh...
It may look a looong tutorial, but once you do this for the first time, it will look a piece of cake.
Final words:
From now on, you can install windows 7 in UEFI mode with your special USB without changing your partition scheme anymore. If you have a data partition beside your os partition (see the example above), when you reinstall the system using your USB thumb drive, at the disk partition window chose the partition where windows is installed, delete it, and reinstall windows to the unformatted area. Your partition with your data will be intact and the installation will automatically mount your data partition to the system. And, all the scope of this procedure, you will always have a pure UEFI installation of the system, with all its benefits.
Have fun!
abvasili
Moderator note: changed subject to match new content. Was: Prepare an usb thumb drive, to boot windows 7 in UEFI mode
I'm just a volunteer. I like to help others where I can. Do my ideas work? I hope so. o_O
Who helped you today? Do not forget to thank him.
My hardware: TP x120e 0596-2ru. Windows 7, sp1, 64Bit, English, installed in UEFI mode.

seanare wrote:
Thank you, as I noted here, your post was the key to my getting a Windows 8 SecureBooting setup on a W530.
In the case of Windows 8, I needed to copy the files away, reformat my USB key as FAT32 and copy the files back, and viola I was able to boot from my USB install media with the BIOS set to only boot UEFI. From there, there rest was easy (for Windows 8, the copying and renaming is not necessary, the key is having a FAT32 partition on the USB media, rather than an NTFS one; the EFI files are already in the right location).
Thank you again good sir.
You are welcome... and I'm happy that the change of the file system helps with windows 8 too. Thanks for confirming that.
abvasili
I'm just a volunteer. I like to help others where I can. Do my ideas work? I hope so. o_O
Who helped you today? Do not forget to thank him.
My hardware: TP x120e 0596-2ru. Windows 7, sp1, 64Bit, English, installed in UEFI mode.

USB thumb drive crashes MBP and PowerBook G4

Hi!
I have a USB thumb drive. It mounts on the Desktop (as two drives, which is not strange because it has both an internal 6 MB of memory and a 2GB SD card) and I can open them. But if I attempt to copy a file either to or from the drive, the Finder hangs forever.
This problem exists both on a shiny new MacBook Pro with 10.4.7, and a PowerBook G4 with 10.3---in either case, I must hard-reboot the machine.
DiskUtility says that the drive checks out OK.
Any thoughts? I tried reformatting the thumb drive, which worked temporarily; but when I added a file to the drive on another machine and tried to transfer it to the Mac, the thing hangs Finder again.
I don't have any problems with the drive on PCs, and I don't have the problem with other USB drives on the Mac.
Xcott

It sounds like the file system is corrupt. I am assuming it's FAT32. I would reformat the drive partitions on a Windows machine and see if that helps.
Also, because it's a dual, you might want to make certain that you do not plug it into a hub or a keyboard but directly into your Mac's USB host port. It may need additional power...
Good Luck!

How do I install Lion onto a USB thumb drive or SD card

Hi, folks..
I'm not asking about how to create a Lion installation thumb drive or SD card, or copy the recovery partition to a USB drive or SD card. I already have a backup Lion install thumb drive. What I am hoping to do is create a bootable Lion thumb drive or SD card on which I can also have Drive Genius and other utilities -- so I can boot from the thumb drive or SD card and work on my unmouted nternal hard drive.
Is it as simple as installing Lion onto the thumb drive or SD card, or is there more to it than that?
I've tried searching for this, but everything I've found has been about creating an install SD or thumb drive.
Thanks in advance!

Okay, so I ran the Lion Install app and directed it to install onto my USB thumb drive. Everything looked like it was doing what I wanted, and since the screen showed that it would take about 17 minutes I stepped away for about a half-hour. When I came back my screen was off, and when I pressed a key the progress bar said it would take another 11 minutes. Huh? I went away again for another half-hour, and when I returned the progress bar hadn't moved -- still 11 minutes.
Okay, I was working on a USB drive, no big thing. No keypresses did anything, so I hit the power button on my Mcbook Pro, shut the sytem down, then started it back up. It booted to a screen to setup Lion. Hmmm.... I shut the system down (this time from the Apple menu), pulled the USB thumb drive, powered back up, and ended up at the same place.
I rebooted, this time holding the Alt key, and saw that my Macintosh HD had been renamed to something about install. Booting from that partition gave me no option but to complete a Lion installation.
Thankfully I have a Time Machine backup, and the recovery partition worked, so my system is back up (although some of my preferences seem to have changed, even though my backup was current -- another "huh?").
So, what did I do wrong?

POSSIBLE? Copy USB thumb drive image to file and rebuild it to use the USB drive ?

I bought an 8GB USB thumb drive and used it to create an install boot disk to boot for install or use disk utility to clone my system drive for failsafe. In other words it is called "Install OS X Mavericks" and I can boot from it.
SO, it just sits there and does nothing while I am not using it, and in the meantime I have some documents I need to get printed at Kinkos and class notes to carry around, and this drive could really be useful to do that, rather than waste time and money to buy a new one and keep track of them all. You know how these things always get lost of broken and you end up with a few of them and never know what's on them?
So ... in UNIX style I tried to do a dd of the drive "dd if=/dev/disk2 of=$HOME/usbdrive.dmg bs=4096" - assuming a 4K block size would work.
The system does not seem to recognize it, so I'm doubting if that was the correct way to do this, or if this can be done at all.
What I want to do in short is to not bother with formating or anything like that, and just create a disk image that I can store around until I need to put it in my USB drive to boot for an install, rebuilt, clone system drive, etc.
Can this be done, and does anyone know how to do it?
I do have Mavericks Server, but I'm not sure how or if the System Image Utility will do this? It sees the drive, but it just give me options to make a Net Boot Image, NetInstall Image, or a NetRestore Image ... and I do not know if any of those options will allow me to put it back on the drive when and if I need to?

The command you want is
sudo /Applications/Install\ OS\ X\ Mavericks.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/Untitled --applicationpath /Applications/Install\ OS\ X\ Mavericks.app --nointeraction
This command only works if "Install OS X Mavericks" is in the Applications folder and a 8GB usb is erased and named "Untitled". Change the command as you see fit.

I have a new USB thumb drive that works in my 2010 iMac but not in my 2012 MacBook Pro

Today I purchased an 'autodrive' usb thumbdrive at Staples. The drive works fine on my mid 2010 iMac, and my Asus Netbook running Windows 7. However, it is not recognized at all by System Information or Disk Utility on my mid 2012 Macbook Pro. Both Macs are running Mountain Lion 10.8.2.
If I connect my 2 year old SanDisk USB thumb drive to the same USB port on my Macbook Pro, it is immediately recognized and a finder window opens. The SanDisk drive is also recognized properly by the iMac and the Netbook.
Is there any way to further debug this issue to get a better idea of why the device is not being recognized by the Macbook Pro?
Thanks,
-Scott

I am having this exact same problem with my New MBP 15" quad core 2.6GHz i7 on 10.8.2. I have other thumb drives that work, but an older thumb drive that works on my prior MBP 15" 2.7GHz dual core i7 on 10.7 and XP and Windows 8 laptops isn't recognized at all by the newer MBP. This thumbdrive is only 256MB and may be USB 1, but USB 1 stuff should work on a USB3 interface unless it's a bug. I've freshly formatted the drive and tested it with disk utility on the older MBP, so it's an issue with the newer Mac's USB controller or MacOS 10.8.2
I suspect a bug.

OS X Lion USB Thumb Drive

If I buy an OS X Lion USB Thumb Drive can I use it to erase the OSX Lion hidden partition on the internal hard drive and install Snow Leopard? I have more problems with Lion than with any other OSX that I've used since 1986 and want to return to the last of the non-BigBrother OSXs.

Downgrade Lion to Snow Leopard
1. Boot from your Snow Leopard Installer Disc. After the installer loads select your language and click on the Continue button. When the menu bar appears select Disk Utility from the Utilities menu.
2. After DU loads select your hard drive (this is the entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. Note the SMART status of the drive in DU's status area. If it does not say "Verified" then the drive is failing or has failed and will need replacing. SMART info will not be reported on external drives. Otherwise, click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.
3. Under the Volume Scheme heading set the number of partitions from the drop down menu to one. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Options button, set the partition scheme to GUID then click on the OK button. Click on the Partition button and wait until the process has completed.
4. Quit DU and return to the installer. Install Snow Leopard.
This will erase the whole drive so be sure to backup your files if you don't have a backup already. If you have performed a TM backup using Lion be aware that you cannot restore from that backup in Snow Leopard (see below.) I suggest you make a separate backup using Carbon Copy Cloner 3.4.1.
If you have Snow Leopard Time Machine backups, do a full system restore per #14 in Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions. If you have subsequent backups from Lion, you can restore newer items selectively, via the "Star Wars" display, per #15 there, but be careful; some Snow Leopard apps may not work with the Lion files.

Format a New USB Thumb Drive

I have a new USB thumb drive I just picked up and I was able to mount in to my Linux machine fine:
dmesg | grep -i "OCZ"
scsi 10:0:0:1: Direct-Access OCZ SD0StorageDevice 0.00 PQ: 0 ANSI: 2
sd 10:0:0:0: [sdd] 15794176 512-byte logical blocks: (8.08 GB/7.53 GiB)
It mounts fine on my system:
[carlos@tuna ~]$ sudo mount /dev/sdd usb/
Password:
[carlos@tuna ~]$ cd usb/
[carlos@tuna usb]$ ls -l
total 80
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 16384 Mar 30 10:12 cisco
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 16384 Apr 19 08:50 files
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 16384 Apr 23 15:46 mail
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 16384 Apr 23 15:49 pics
Now I would like to wipe and reformat the entire drive since I backed up the data. However before I reformat the drive, how can I set the label name into the format command while formatting as fat32? I don't need to use FDISK since I am not changing anything in regards to the partition table / chunk size. I just want to format as fat32 however I don't have mkfs.msdos or mkfs.fat32 on my Arch Linux system. I checked the Wiki and didn't find anything nor did any search thread results.
Anyone know what package I need to format fat32 & how I can set a label name so when it's mounted, I can see a specific name for the drive?

Carlwill wrote:
sudo mount /dev/sdd usb/
mkfs.vfat -F 32 -i ocz_usb /dev/sdd1
me spots some inconsistencies. i'd bet if you used gparted instead, it'd warn you and say something like "create DOS Partition table first" or somesuch.
i dunno, this is the one area i like the wipe-my-ass-for-me bloat , could be worth a try.

How to create bootable USB thumb drive from Lion on Mac Mini 2011?

Hello folks
Yesterday my new Mac Mini (Core i7 2,7 Ghz, 4 GB RAM, ATI Radeon HD6630M 256 MB) arrived. It replaces my old Mac Mini (Core Duo 1,83 Ghz, 2 GB RAM, Intel GMA950 64 MB). One day I'll replace the 500 GB 5400 RPM HDD in this Mini by an Intel SSD drive (just like I did with my previous Mini). I'll do a fully clean install then (formatting the SSD drive in Disk Utility and then installing Lion on it from a bootable USB thumb drive). The only problem is I can't seem to download Lion for free from the Mac AppStore (MAS) although I have bought a new Mac Mini which came with Lion pre-installed. I know how to create a bootable USB thumb drive with Lion on it when you download it from the MAS. But that's the problem... I can't seem to download Lion from the MAS for free. When I open the MAS while holding down the Option key I can download Lion but it will charge me for it. Is there any way I can download Lion from the MAS without paying for it? Since it already came with my new Mac Mini 2011 this should be possible I guess?
And will I still be able to download the iLife '11 apps (iPhoto, iMovie and Garageband) for FREE that came with my new Mac Mini when I do a fully clean install as described above? Thanks in advance.
Greetings
Jocau

After doing some research, it seems that there are only 2 WAYS to do a complete reinstall of Lion on the Mac Mini 2011 without paying for the Lion download in the Mac AppStore (i.e. recreating every partition, also the Recovery HD partition, from scratch e.g. when installing Lion on a clean HDD/SSD).
1) COMPLETELY clone the Mac Mini 2011 HDD including all of its partitions to an external drive and restore it when you want to do a complete reinstall.
2) Use the LION INTERNET RECOVERY feature built-in into new Macs that ship with Lion (this feature is present in new Macs starting from the Mac Mini 2011 and Macbook Air 2011).
OS X Lion: About Lion Recovery
Lion Internet Recovery
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.
As with the Recovery HD, reinstallation of OS X Lion from Lion Internet Recovery requires an Internet connection. See "Supported network configurations and protocols" below.
Restoring iLife applications after Internet Restore of OS X Lion
If you reinstall Lion on a new Mac that shipped with OS X Lion installed, on an erased or replaced hard drive, you can download iPhoto, iMovie, and GarageBand from the Mac App Store.
After installation, start from Lion.
Double-click the App Store icon in the dock.
Enter your Apple ID and password.
Click Purchases.
If you haven't previously accepted your bundled iLife applications within the Mac App Store, you should see your iLife applications appear in the Accept portion of the screen. Click Accept.
You may be asked for your Apple ID and password once again. Your iLife applications now move to the Purchased section. These applications are part of the software that came with your Lion based computer. Your account will not be charged for them. Click Install to compete installation of your applications.
Source: Lion Recovery
It's a bit sad that these seem to be the only 2 options. Lion Internet Recovery is the preferred one here since my monthly internet traffic limit isn't a problem (but my download speed is). This problem could have been easily solved by Apple by just checking the system specs or serial number when trying to download Lion from the Mac AppStore. By using one of the 2 options in my previous sentence the Mac AppStore could see that I have a new Mac Mini 2011 that ships with Lion which would give me the option to download Lion from the Mac AppStore for free and eventually create a bootable USB thumb drive of it.

How to create a Mac OS X Lion USB thumb drive installation bootable drive on a brand new Macbook???

Hi,
As Apple have decided not to give with new laptops USB thumb drives for installation of OS X Lion (as they did with Snow Leopard), since people on the go might not have access to high speed internet when the system crashes, plenty of tutorials have surfaced about "How to Make a Bootable Mac OS X Lion USB Install Key"
Such as
http://www.iclarified.com/entry/index.php?enid=16149
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2389178,00.asp
These all assume you have upgraded to Lion from Snow Leopard thus purchasing the Lion on the App Store.
Any ideas what people who have purchased brand new Mabooks do? As the system comes preloaded with the OS X Lion and it's not considered purchased on the App store.
I think Apple's new policy to charge customers $69 for this thumb drive is wrong and outrageous since the price of the laptop includes a license for the OS!
Thanks,
Guy.

Saifan Pilot wrote:
Any ideas what people who have purchased brand new Mabooks do? As the system comes preloaded with the OS X Lion and it's not considered purchased on the App store.
Recovery Partition http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4718
For those Macs shipped with 10.7
Lion Recovery Disk Assistant
http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1433

Sync USB thumb drive as if iPod?

Summary:
I want to use one of my USB thumb drives as a music library that can work on my car's audio system. What is the easiest way to do this?
Background:
My brand new car stereo can play music off of an iPod. This is convenient, but I don't want to just leave my ipod touch in my car. My car stereo can also play music right off of a USB thumbdrive. So is there a way to sync all my play lists on my USB drive? This way I can just leave it in my car and not worry about theft, my ipod melting in the sun, etc.
I don't think iTunes can do this, so maybe there's a script somewhere? It will have to prune out the m4p files since obviously I can't authorize my car stereo to play them... (grrr DRM...)
Considered Solutions:
1) Obviously, I can just copy files over manually, and write a perl script to remove .m4p files. But I'd like to get playlists...
2) I could get the 32 gb USB drive I saw, which can hold all my stuff, but then that's too much data to browse while driving my car.
3) I could manually export each playlist, and write my script to parse and copy those files... but that would still require me to manually export the playlists (so it's not automatic).
4) I could just try to remember to bring my ipod with me whenever i go somewhere, but i'd rather just leave a usb stick in my car. Then there's nothing to worry about, and nothing to forget.
5) I could plug in my ipod, and see if there's a way to access it's file system and then just mirror the usb drive off of the ipod... but i looks like the ipod is hidden in the file directory.
6) If any Apple people see this, I'd appreciate them thinking about allowing iTunes to treat a USB drive as a limited iPod.

I have the same issue. I have not had a problem copying album folders to the thumb drive from the itunes library but the problem I have is that most of my files are not in the mp3 format but in lossless or AAC.
I have been selecting the tunes I want and, after changing my import settings to high level mp3, selecting "create MP3 version" under the advanced menu. The issue is not wanting to duplicate my library. If I were to burn that selection of non-MP3 files to a CD specifying a MP3 disk I don't get the duplicates. Burning the disks and then copying the files from there to the stick works but you have to put in the album folders manually and that is a lot of disks to burn for an 8G stick. I tried using DVD's but you can only burn a data disk in that format and no MP3 conversion.
A lot of new cars come with the USB option and the usb flash drives are cheap. There will be a rapidly increasing number of people looking to get a playlist to MP3 format onto flash drives. Apple needs to give us a tweak here.

OS X Lion USB Thumb Drive on New HDD?

Hello Apple Gurus!
Here's my situation.. I'm working on a Dual-Core Intel Xenon Mac Pro running 10.4.11. This machine has been put through heck and highwater; I am the 3rd person to sit at this station since it was purchased and I've been putting this poor Mac through its paces for almost 4 years now.
The company has just approved an order for a bunch of new hardware and software for my department, but because this machine is already an Intel, I'm stuck with upgrades instead of a new machine, which is fine this machine has pleanty of horsepower for graphics and web work. It's just that I do not trust the HDD enough to upgrade the OS. It has so many hours running, I'd feel much safer using new hardware to put the new software onto then drag any relavant work files over from the old 10.4 drive.
My question is this.. I have a brand new, freshly formatted 320gb SATA drive. If my company purchases the 'OS X Lion USB Thumb Drive' from Apple for $70.00 will it allow me to install 10.7 onto this new drive, even though I do not have 10.6.x ? I know I'll get refused the purchase of a disc for 10.6 then another purchase for a download of 10.7 so I'm looking for a one-step solution.. otherwise I'll be stuck with 10.6 until Mac OS 20 comes out :'(

Yes, you can install on the hard drive. You can either upgrade an existing Snow Leopard system or you can install Lion cleanly by erasing the target the drive first.

Can't install from USB Thumb Drive

I'm trying to install MacOs 10.7 from Apple USB Thumb Drive on a 2011 MacMini, but when I restart from the USB drive apper on the screen a "X" and then the computer shuts down.
What's wrong?
On the MacMini there was already MacOs 10.7, but now I formatted the HardDisk.
Sorry for my english,
Gregorio Pellegrino

Is the system able to boot into the recovery/installer from the Mac OS X 10.7 USB Drive? Is this error occurring after you've started the install process from the USB?
You may have to completely repartition the hard disk drive with 1 partition and a GUID partition table. I had a similar issue when I moved a hard disk from a Windows machine and forgot to change the partition type.
Note: Creating a new partition table will make all data currently on the disk inaccessible, effectively erasing the data.
Here's the steps to repartition using the Disk Utility application available after booting the mac from the USB Installer.
1) Highlight/select the Mac's internal Hard Disk Drive (not the volume) in Disk Utility. The disk will be named something like "240 GB OCZ-VERTEX3", depending on your specific size, make and model. Basically the format is "Size GB Make/Model".
2) Click the "Partition" tab on the right side.
3) From the "Partition Layout" pick box select "1 Partition"
4) Click the "Options" button below the drive space diagram. Select the option "GUID Partition Table". Click OK.
5) Click the Apply button and allow Disk Utility to complete the task.
6) Quit Disk Utility and begin the install process to the Mac's Internal Hard Disk Drive.
The above resolved this issue for me and it makes good sense why it worked since the partition scheme/table on my drive was MBR and I changed it to GUID.
Good Luck,
-Josh
Message was edited by: Joshua Kapellen

Encrypted Live System on USB-thumb drive

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