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Cloned my boot drive using CCC, lost the Lion recovery partition in the process

O

Obioban

macrumors regular
Original poster
Oct 19, 2011
216
254
I upgraded my boot drive to a SSD but cloning it using CCC, and it appears that it only brought over the main partition.

Everything is functioning fine now, but I'd like to have the recovery partition, should I need it one day.

Suggestions as to the easiest way to add it back to my drive?

Thanks!
 
carrieann

carrieann

macrumors member
Nov 17, 2009
52
0
Washington, DC
So it's not clear from the CCC site... at what point do you recreate the Recovery Partition?

Is this the process:

1) put the new hard drive in an external case, connect via usb
2) clone the existing hard drive to the new hard drive using file-level copy
3) next, use CCC to then recreate the recovery partition on the new hard drive (still connected via USB)
4) disconnect the new drive, swap the hard drives and put the new drive in, boot as normal, and you should now have both partitions

OR do you swap them FIRST, and THEN use CCC to create the recovery partition (reverse 3 and 4)? Or does it not matter?
 
GGJstudios

GGJstudios

macrumors Westmere
May 16, 2008
44,545
943
carrieann said:
So it's not clear from the CCC site... at what point do you recreate the Recovery Partition?
Click to expand...
Actually, it's very clear. From the link I posted:
When performing a block copy of a Lion volume, CCC will automatically clone the Recovery HD volume associated with the source disk.
Click to expand...
If you click the link in that statement, it gives you detailed instructions on how to backup the Lion Recovery Partition, along with the rest of your hard drive.
 
O

Obioban

macrumors regular
Original poster
Oct 19, 2011
216
254
Hmm...

At this point I've been using the recoveryless clone drive for over a week.

Any thoughts on how to add the recovery partition without copying over the full original drive again? Would rather not have to figure out what has changed in the last week...
 
Weaselboy

Weaselboy

Moderator
Staff member
Jan 23, 2005
34,136
15,598
California
Obioban said:
Hmm...

At this point I've been using the recoveryless clone drive for over a week.

Any thoughts on how to add the recovery partition without copying over the full original drive again? Would rather not have to figure out what has changed in the last week...
Click to expand...

If you don't want to mess with CCC, just reinstall Lion. That will create a recovery partition and will not touch your data. Be sure and backup first.
 
prisstratton

prisstratton

macrumors 6502a
Dec 20, 2011
542
126
Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada
You have three choices:

(i) Re-install Lion over the cloned drive (obviously do not re-partition and format), just point the installer at the drive. Your data should remain intact. (Backup first)

***I was obviously writing this at the same time as Weaselboy (above)***

(ii) Create a bootable USB recovery drive. The Recovery HD partition will not be on your new SSD, but if the whole drive were to fail you would not want it there anyway. Follow the procedure (link below), using your original drive as the source for the Recovery HD partition:

https://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?p=14164020#post14164020

In the last step in the above process (where you burn the image), simply drag a newly formatted USB drive into the Destination field and restore the new image to it.

(iii) Manually create the partition yourself - I just started looking into the details of how to do this - not recommended.
 
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