
Performing a clean install of OS X Mountain Lion erases all the data on the target disk. It contains a bootable system with utilities for performing basic disk repair, as well as the ability to reinstall the OS if necessary. This is a hidden partition created by the Mountain Lion installer.

:max_bytes(150000):strip_icc()/005-manually-install-printer-on-mac-2260791-8d87ba3f9e664b2495b0fc21cfccd099.jpg)
Set one of them to TargetDisk mode, boot the other one off the good disk (I don't think it matters which is used here?).īecause your other Mac has 10.5 Leopard you don't have App Store and so can't easily get Mountain Lion (even assuming the failed machine is compatible). If you have a firewire cable the easiest solution would be to cable the two Macs together. (This is where you should wish you had backups with SuperDuper! which creates fully bootable clones of your hard disk).Īssuming that you don't, you need to use your other Mac (note that the installation disks from another Mac will not work in yours - only purchased OS X disks can be used in any machine).

If the disk is unreadable then recovery disk will not work - and when you put in a new blank disk it won't be on that one either, so the recovery procedure outlined will not work here.
