Mavericks Not Creating Restore Partition on DIY Fusion?

alexjohnson said:

I bought the recent Newegg Mac mini bundle with the DIY Fusion. I was able to create the Fusion drive using Disk Utility from my external Mavericks boot drive and it works fine.

But, I also did this before I created the Fusion drive, and then I guess it was the first Software Update to Mavericks added the Restore partition. That all got erased as part of the process fo creating the Fusion drive.

This automatic creation of the Recovery partition hasn't happened on the Fusion. If I do Cmnd-R I go straight to Internet Restore, and that does work - but it hasn't "stuck". There's good advice elsewhere on the forums about using Terminal manually to create one and I'm happy to do that but would prefer the automagic solution. Partly, that's because I will want that partition to be recognized by the OS as the "official" recovery partition so it gets updated as and when, as opposed to its being just a sliver that happens to have the bootable installer. Also, I'm comparing apples to oranges but the early DIY Fusion advice just created a logical volume, without the true Fusion capability of writing the frequently accessed files on the SSD, so I'd rather the "official" route than the workaround to avoid unintended complications down the road.

Anyway, any thoughts would be appreciated. It's not at all urgent now, but one day it may be!

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RPs are created on the drives by the full installers (not updates), and the installers will not create an RP on a home brew Fusion drive, like they won't on Raid volumes. It is not a Mavericks issue. You can have an RP by creating one on one of the drives before making the FD, then when you make the FD chose the remaining partition not the whole drive. I did this on my first FD, but I decided not to bother last time I made an FD, as I have RPs on my back up drives.
Since home-brew Fusion Drives are not "official" I don't think there is an "official" way of putting an RP on one.

@alexjohnson:
You should NEVER use HFS+ (Journaled, Case sensitive, ...) or other file systems, CoreStorage volumes (FileVault 2, Fusion drive, ...) and other filesystem/block device I/O related software/drivers if the OS is not a final version (i.e. a version from the MAS). Otherwise you can lose data (real files, folders, or just metadata). It's not worth the risk. Use a separate machine or VM for OS X previews.

In the meantime, i think™ this can help:
http://pintofcode.com/blog/2013/8/19/mavericks-and-fusion-drive

alexjohnson said:

Mike Boreham, my experience suggests you may not be right, or at least you're not accurate. First, while the Fusion is "home brew" it is created by Disk Utility and is as kosher as any other, and is explicitly not the Terminal command-line version that was floating around at the end of last year (and which is kind-of referenced in the link above). I don't see how it would be any different from buying a factory Fusion and, at some point, nuke-and-paving it for a fresh install. Perhaps it is - can you or someone enlighten me as to what and how?

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I agree that our homebrew FDs are created by diskutil which must be the same as factory Fusion Drives, so to that extent they are "official" and "kosher". I have a simple test to check that mine is behaving as an FD not just a logical volume.

I don't quite understand the second part of your sentence: "First, while the Fusion is "home brew" it is created by Disk Utility and is as kosher as any other, and is explicitly not the Terminal command-line version that was floating around at the end of last year". I am not aware of being able to create homebrew FDs without the Terminal...or have I missed something?

My understanding is that OWC claimed the the home brew FDs created using diskutil before 10.8.3 may have been just logical volumes, and that Apple changed something in diskutil in 10.8.3 which meant they were proper FDs, even though they used the same Terminal instructions. I created my FD booted from a 10.8.4 volume.

Your original question implies that factory FD machines do have a Recovery Partition, is that the case? or do they rely on Internet Recovery? If they do have an actual RP then, as you say, a factory FD machine owner would expect to be able to erase and fresh install and automagically still have an RP. Perhaps factory FD machines have a protected partition (like some WD drives had a while back) which could not be erased by a format process. I don't think factory FD machines have a special version of Disk Utility? i.e. one which enable the FD to be managed by the UI rather than Terminal, and specify having an RP.

I don't quite understand your comment about Thumbdrives, (if it was relating to me). I have never used thumb drives for this. I put my RPs on FDs with the Disk Center tool within Carbon Copy Cloner. As long as you boot from an external drive with an RP, or on which CCC has been able to archive a copy of the RP, CCC can install an RP directly onto the HDD in seconds, before creating the FD...much quicker than running the full installer. Perhaps this is not related to what you were saying.