I've inherited an almost brand new 13" Macbook Pro Retina. I'd like wipe the hard drive clean and start with a fresh install of Mountain Lion. I've done this a million times before... but never while booted from the Recovery Partition. So I just thought I'd have someone who has experience with this check my math here.
Take a look at the following photo of the Mac booted into Recovery mode with Disk Utility running. Can I safely click on the "500.25 GB APPLE SSD S...", go to the Erase tab, wipe it completely clean, and then use it as the target for the install? Will that keep the Recovery Partition intact?
Seems reasonable to me... but I've been advised against this approach. I've also used Apple's Recovery Disk Assistant to make a bootable USB stick just in case. Is there any reason that I should boot off of and install from that instead?
Bonus Question: When I'm erasing and reformatting disks, I never know if I should click on "500.25 GB APPLE SSD S..." or "Macintosh HD". Thoughts?