My time machine is not working well and is terribly slow in backing up a whole 
machine, even a small one. I could much faster and more easily do an updated 
clone backup to a usb disc and the re-install from there. Would that be 
sensible?

I'm trying to keep this a bit of a secret: it'll be a nice surprise for her to 
wake up one morning and find that her machine has morphed a little!

I'm not quite sure how to find the recovery partition.

Thanks,

Ranulph



On 29 Jul 2012, at 19:05, Sam - MacAmbulance wrote:

> Hi Ranulph
> 
> The easiest way is to do a full time machine backup of your current MB and 
> then wipe the MBA using the recovery partition. Hold CMD + R when booting, 
> then use Disk Utility to erase the drive, then reinstall OS X. It's easiest 
> to import from a time machine backup as the MBA doesn't have an ethernet 
> socket or firewire for target disk mode.
> 
> Regards
> 
> Sam
> MacAmbulance
> Providing affordable Apple & PC services
> 
> Sam Mullen
> 07747 778022
> http://www.macambulance.co.uk
> [email protected]
> 
> 
> On 29 Jul 2012, at 19:00, Ranulph Glanville <[email protected]> wrote:
> 
>> I have a MBA running Lion. I'd like to erase it, and convert it to be my 
>> wife's machine, importing everything from her old MB.
>> 
>> I know there's (often) a recovery partition. If I can find it, can I 
>> re-initialise the machine from that, importing the date from the old MB? I 
>> guess that has to be done by usb, so it'll be a little protracted!
>> 
>> Thanks for any suggestions and/or pointers!
>> 
>> Ranulph
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> On 26 Jul 2012, at 17:03, Sam - MacAmbulance wrote:
>> 
>>> Hi Stephen
>>> 
>>> The USB flash drives are nowhere near SSD drives in terms of performance. 
>>> Also the USB2 bus is 480mbps, your internal SATA connection is anything up 
>>> to 3gb/sec.
>>> 
>>> You'll find the machine much slower than normal booting off a USB stick and 
>>> should only be done if you need to repair your internal hard drive (or use 
>>> the Lion recovery partition).
>>> 
>>> Regards
>>> 
>>> Sam
>>> MacAmbulance
>>> Providing affordable Apple & PC services
>>> 
>>> Sam Mullen
>>> 07747 778022
>>> http://www.macambulance.co.uk
>>> [email protected]
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
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