One of the most useful features introduced in 10.7 is Lion Recovery, a hidden, bootable, 650MB partition that is automatically installed on most Macs[1] running Mac OS X Lion. It gives users the tools to reinstall Lion from the internet, repair their disks, troubleshoot problems in Safari, and even restore from a Time Machine backup without the need for optical media.

Unfortunately Lion Recovery is limited by the start up disk it is installed upon. It cannot be used on a start up disk that is failing, or on a replacement drive where Lion has yet to be installed.

For these situations Apple has created the Lion Recovery Disk Assistant, a 1MB utility that lets you create a Lion Recovery partition on an external drive that has all of the same capabilities as the built-in Lion Recovery partition.

But what if you wanted to burn a Lion Recovery CD?

The Lion Recovery Disk Assistant is limited. It only allows the creation of Lion Recovery on an external drive. To burn a Lion Recovery CD you will need to use Disk Utility instead.

1. The first step is to reveal Lion’s hidden Recovery Partition. To do this you will need to enable Disk Utility’s secret Debug menu by entering the following command in the Terminal. defaults write com.apple.DiskUtility DUDebugMenuEnabled 1
2. With the Debug Menu revealed launch Disk Utility and select “Show every partition” from the menu you just uncovered.
3. You should now be able to see Lion’s hidden Recovery HD partition in the list of available volumes to the left. Select it, and choose New Disk Image from Recovery HD using Disk Utility’s File Menu.
4. You can save your Recovery Image wherever you like using the compressed Image Format to save space.
5. Once your Lion Recovery disk image has been created the last step is to burn it onto a CD.[2] From within Disk Utility select Burn from the Images menu and select the Recovery Disk Image you just created.
6. Once your Lion Recovery CD has been burned you can test it out by booting from it. Insert the CD into your Mac’s optical drive and hold down the C key as your Mac starts up.

Optical media may be on its way out, but having a disposable, reliable way to restore your OS never goes out of style. Of course Burning a Lion Boot Disk with all of installation files included on a single DVD may be a more preferable way to go.