Missing Recovery Partition After Cloning hard drive

orfeas0 · Dec 7, 2011

Mike Boreham said:
There are three ways to recover the Recovery partition:

1. Re-Run the full installer (NOT the combo updater). You can run this on top of existing install without losing anything. it is not like an erase then install.

I just tried to install Lion over my existing partition but after the restart it said it couldn't do it and I should visit http://www.apple.com/support/no-partition .
(more specifically, it couldn't create the recovery partition).

Mike Boreham said:
2. Use the Disk Center option in Carbon Copy Cloner. If you can boot from any disk which already has a Recovery Partition this will create a Recovery partition on the destination disk without altering anything already there. It creates a new invisible partition and clones the Recovery partition. This is a quite separate operation from cloning the Lion partition.

I have done both the above many times completely successfully, but haven't personally used the third method which is mentioned above...

I can't boot from a disk with a recovery partition since I don't have a disk like that. Can I create a bootable usb flash drive? If yes, how/with which apps?

Mike Boreham said:
3. Use Apples Lion Recovery Disk Asssitant. THis is like method 2, needs a an existing Recovery partition to copy, according the notes.

same as above, no existing recovery partition.

Mike Boreham said:
Caveat: When I have successfully run the full installer on top of the existing install, there have been no other partitions on the disk, e.g. Bootcamp. can't vouch for this case.

I have a boot camp partition and that's probably it can't create a recovery one...

But if I can make a Lion usb flash drive I'll be fine.

iWind130290 · Dec 7, 2011

mikefla said:
I cloned my existing hard drive to a new SSD drive. I was not able to use SuperDuper to do the cloning (which is what I usually use) so I used the alternative Carbon Copy Cloner. However the Recovery partition created by Lion was not copied (I guess because it's a hidden partition). How can I re-create this partition or copy it from my old drive to the new drive? I would just like to have it on the new drive because it's useful for troubleshooting purposes. Thanks.

-Mike

You can use Disk Utility to restore the RecoveryHD partition to a small partition of your new hard drive. Follow this:
Step 1: As we know, RecoveryHD partition is hidden on your old hard drive. This step will help you to make it show up in DiskUtility. Open Terminal and type: defaults write com.apple.DiskUtility DUDebugMenuEnabled 1 . Once you entered the command, open DiskUtility and look at the topbar. There's a new menu Debug . Click on it and choose Show Every Partitions. Once you've done this step the RecoveryHD partition is shown up and you go forward to Mount it.
Step 2: Use DiskUtility to create a new partition on your new hard drive (larger than 650MB).
Step 3: Use DiskUtility to restore the RecoveryHD to the new partition you create in step 2. Done?

Mike Boreham · Dec 7, 2011

orfeas0 said:
But if I can make a Lion usb flash drive I'll be fine.

THIS LINK tells you how to create a Recovery drive on a USB with the installer actually on the USB stick. The regular Recovery partition has a reinstall option which initiates a download or the 4Gb installer.

I put mine on an 8Gb stick.

Flyinb · Dec 7, 2011

AS someone stated before just simply reinstall Lion again from app store and it will be there with all apps, docs, music, everything you had before. I had to do this on 4 of my MBP's after installing new ssd's.

Simply easy, done.....

Mike Boreham · Dec 8, 2011

niksimpsons said:
Carbon Copy Cloner -- This popular cloning tool can perform both file-level and block-level cloning.
Winclone -- Most Mac cloning tools will not specify Boot Camp partitions, whereas this tool does.

But Carbon Copy Cloner 3.4.4 b1 can now create the partition and file-level clone just the Recovery partition. See earlier posts. This is currently unique. I haven't actually tried CCC in block level mode to see if it would copy the Recovery HD, but I suspect not because the main interface only allows you chose partitions, not whole HDs. The Recovery partition is separate from the OS partition, and not seen by CCC, so can't be selected even for block level. CCC now warns you if you are about to attempt a clone which will result in there being no Recovery HD on the destination.

Winclone was a fanatastic app for managing Bootcamp before support was dropped by its maker after Windows 7 problems. Since Lion someone else is trying to support it without the code, with mixed success (none for me). It won't handle Recovery partitions of course.

Other device copy apps which copy absolutely everything on the disk, which I have tried have been Drive Genius and CopycatX. Both these have worked for me but I have also had the odd failure.

Weaselboy · Dec 9, 2011

Mike Boreham said:
But Carbon Copy Cloner 3.4.4 b1 can now create the partition and file-level clone just the Recovery partition. See earlier posts.

I did not notice this update. It is a nice added feature.

mcdj · Dec 29, 2011

iWind130290 said:
You can use Disk Utility to restore the RecoveryHD partition to a small partition of your new hard drive. Follow this:
Step 1: As we know, RecoveryHD partition is hidden on your old hard drive. This step will help you to make it show up in DiskUtility. Open Terminal and type: defaults write com.apple.DiskUtility DUDebugMenuEnabled 1 . Once you entered the command, open DiskUtility and look at the topbar. There's a new menu Debug . Click on it and choose Show Every Partitions. Once you've done this step the RecoveryHD partition is shown up and you go forward to Mount it.
Step 2: Use DiskUtility to create a new partition on your new hard drive (larger than 650MB).
Step 3: Use DiskUtility to restore the RecoveryHD to the new partition you create in step 2. Done?

Just in case anyone else found these instructions and wants to try them, I would strongly advise against it.

I recently bought a new SSD. I cloned my old 10.7.2 drive to it, not realizing that the Recovery HD would not come for the ride. I followed the above instructions, created a 1gb partition on the SSD, fired up my old drive, used DU to restore the old Recovery HD to the new 1gb partition, rebooted, and voila, I was able to boot into the newly created Recovery HD.

Great, right? WRONG. After verifying the Recovery HD worked ok, I restarted and now my Lion install is completely hosed...circle slash. I tried repairing permissions, disk repair, I even re-cloned the Recovery HD using the latest beta of CCC. No dice.

Now I'm faced with reinstalling Lion.

Mike Boreham · Dec 29, 2011

mcdj said:
Now I'm faced with reinstalling Lion.

No backup then?

Sorry I am sure you are regretting it now. Why not keep your old drive as a backup?

maber23 · Jan 3, 2012

This worked for me (I just started from Step 3 because I haven't any Recovery Partition):

http://derflounder.wordpress.com/2011/10/22/removing-and-rebuilding-a-malfunctioning-recover-hd-partition/

When updating to 10.7.2, there’s a Lion Recovery Update that goes along with it. This is meant to update your Recover HD recovery partition to 10.7.2 along with your Mac. However, when I tried updating, I could see from the logs that for whatever reason, my Recovery HD was staying at 10.7.1 and was not being successfully updated. As the new Find My Mac functionality in iCloud relies on Recovery HD being updated to 10.7.2, I wanted to be able to fix this problem without having to reinstall or reimage my Mac. Fortunately, thanks to the work of Clay Caviness at Google, there’s a way to rebuild your recovery partition (at least for 10.7.2) on a Mac that doesn’t have one. I did have one, but I knew how to fix that. See below the jump for the procedure.

Note: All commands shown are single lines.

Step One: Make a full backup of your boot drive.

This is absolutely the most important step of this process. Any time you’re moving partitions around, stuff can go wrong. Making a backup beforehand can turn a later “Something went wrong” moment from a crisis into a less-bad inconvenience.

Step Two: Remove the existing Recovery HD recovery partition

1. Get the disk identifier of your recovery partition by running the following command:

diskutil list

2. Once you’ve identified the entry, then remove it by running the following command. (In this case, I’ll be using disk0s4 for the recovery partition and disk0s3 for the main boot partition.):

diskutil eraseVolume HFS+ ErasedDisk /dev/disk0s4

3. Next, merge the recovery and boot partitions together to create one partition (the MacHD identifier is to give the partition a new name; your existing boot drive name shouldn’t be changed by this process):

diskutil mergePartitions HFS+ MacHD disk0s3 disk0s4

Step Three: Rebuilding the recovery partition:

1. Download the Lion Recovery Update from http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1464

2. Run the following commands to attach the correct disk image and rebuild the recovery partition:

hdiutil attach RecoveryHDUpdate.dmg

pkgutil --expand /Volumes/Mac\ OS\ X\ Lion\ Recovery\ HD\ Update/RecoveryHDUpdate.pkg /tmp/RecoveryHDUpdate

hdiutil attach /tmp/RecoveryHDUpdate/RecoveryHDUpdate.pkg/RecoveryHDMeta.dmg

/tmp/RecoveryHDUpdate/RecoveryHDUpdate.pkg/Scripts/Tools/dmtest ensureRecoveryPartition / /Volumes/Recovery\ HD\ Update/BaseSystem.dmg 0 0 /Volumes/Recovery\ HD\ Update/BaseSystem.chunklist

At this point, you will see a large amount of code fly by as the recovery partition is rebuilt. It should end with Creating recovery partition: finished

The next set of commands is clean-up and making the system recognize the updated recovery partition.

hdiutil eject /Volumes/Recovery\ HD\ Update
hdiutil eject /Volumes/Mac\ OS\ X\ Lion\ Recovery\ HD\ Update
sudo touch /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.Boot.plist
sudo kextcache -f -u /

Once finished, restart your Mac and verify that you can boot to Recovery HD. To verify that your Recovery HD is now on 10.7.2, open the Terminal (available from the Utilities menu when booted from the Recovery HD partition,) and run the following command:

sw_vers

The following information should be displayed:

ProductName: Mac OS X
ProductVersion: 10.7.2
BuildVersion: 11C74

davidlv · Jan 3, 2012

iWind130290 said:
You can use Disk Utility to restore the RecoveryHD partition to a small partition of your new hard drive. Follow this:
Step 1: As we know, RecoveryHD partition is hidden on your old hard drive. This step will help you to make it show up in DiskUtility. Open Terminal and type: defaults write com.apple.DiskUtility DUDebugMenuEnabled 1 . Once you entered the command, open DiskUtility and look at the topbar. There's a new menu Debug . Click on it and choose Show Every Partitions. Once you've done this step the RecoveryHD partition is shown up and you go forward to Mount it.
Step 2: Use DiskUtility to create a new partition on your new hard drive (larger than 650MB).
Step 3: Use DiskUtility to restore the RecoveryHD to the new partition you create in step 2. Done?

I followed these instructions and was successful in creating the Recovery HD on my external drive (a clone of the Lion partition). However, the Recovery HD partition was mounting on every reboot, i.e., not quite the same as the original "invisible" Recovery HD partition. I gave up on this, deleted the Recovery HD partition, and used the latest beta of CCC (must reboot after updating the app from the menu option) which worked perfectly. Great piece of software!

bdodds1985 · Jan 22, 2012

what if i have the lion thumb drive and want to erase the recovery partition from my hd? i would like to transfer everything from my from one ssd to another and erase the recovery in the process.

Weaselboy · Jan 23, 2012

bdodds1985 said:
what if i have the lion thumb drive and want to erase the recovery partition from my hd? i would like to transfer everything from my from one ssd to another and erase the recovery in the process.

Once you boot from the thumb drive and get to the opening screen, go to the Utilities menu and select Disk Utility. From there select the drive to reformat as shown in my screen cap. Note you are selecting the entire drive to format here and not just the Macintosh HD partition below it. Once you select the drive go to the Erase tab in Disk Util and reformat the drive to Mac OS Extended (Journaled). That will reformat the entire drive and overwrite the Recovery Partition. A new recovery partition will be created once you install Lion.

waltervt · Jan 30, 2012

Weaselboy said:
Once you boot from the thumb drive and get to the opening screen, go to the Utilities menu and select Disk Utility. From there select the drive to reformat as shown in my screen cap. Note you are selecting the entire drive to format here and not just the Macintosh HD partition below it. Once you select the drive go to the Erase tab in Disk Util and reformat the drive to Mac OS Extended (Journaled). That will reformat the entire drive and overwrite the Recovery Partition. A new recovery partition will be created once you install Lion.

Based on what you said, if I want to reinstall (clean) Lion and keep the recovery partition, I'll boot from the thumb drive and erase just the Mac HD. That should give me a clean install of Lion and keep the partition, right?

Weaselboy · Jan 30, 2012

waltervt said:
Based on what you said, if I want to reinstall (clean) Lion and keep the recovery partition, I'll boot from the thumb drive and erase just the Mac HD. That should give me a clean install of Lion and keep the partition, right?

Yes, but either way would still give you the recovery partition.

Flyinb · Jan 30, 2012

Just reinstall Lion from app store, plain simple easy

viniciusferrao · Feb 4, 2013

Just use this command in terminal to fix Apple_Boot Partition Type:

Code:

asr adjust --target /dev/disk0s3 -settype "Apple_Boot"

PS: Fix /dev/diskXsY to your Recovery HD.

virtualruffy · Dec 2, 2015

viniciusferrao said:
Just use this command in terminal to fix Apple_Boot Partition Type:

Code:

asr adjust --target /dev/disk0s3 -settype "Apple_Boot"

PS: Fix /dev/diskXsY to your Recovery HD.

PERFECT! That's the command I was looking for. To determine the partition you need to fix, first enter terminal command:
diskutil list
to see the partition numbers of your drive partitions: disk0s01, disk0s2 etc.
I had to enter sudo in front of the asr command since I was not logged in as root so:
sudo asr adjust --target /dev/disk0s3 -settype "Apple_Boot"
then enter your password at the prompt

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Missing Recovery Partition After Cloning hard drive

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