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.
D.h. man kann übers Netz auf eine völlig leere Platte eine Recovery-Partition spielen. Im zweiten Schritt wird von der gebootet und dann das OS aus dem Store geladen. Der Inhalt des kleinen USB-Sticks, der oben erwähnt wurde ist wohl bei neuen macs schon im EFI drin.