So, how exactly do you remove the Recovery Partition?

[WeegieMac]

I've formatted my External drive used for Lion DP4, and when I hold down Option after booting my iMac, the Recovery Partition still shows with the orange "external drive" icon.

No sign of it in Disk Utility under partitions or anything.

 

[codymac]

I used diskutil eraseVolume

 

[zorinlynx]

I'm curious, where do they put this recovery partition? Is it at the beginning or end of the drive?

The end would be more convenient, so you can just remove it and expand the system partition to fill the drive.

I plan to copy the recovery partition to a USB stick and remove it, not just to save space but to "disconnect" it from the system drive, so I can still restore to a new drive if I have a disk failure.

 

[Cougarcat]

I plan to copy the recovery partition to a USB stick and remove it, not just to save space but to "disconnect" it from the system drive, so I can still restore to a new drive if I have a disk failure.

You might want to just restore the entire install dmg to your flash drive (provided it's large enough) so you don't have to download the thing again in the event of a disk failure.

 

[codymac]

I plan to copy the recovery partition to a USB stick and remove it, not just to save space but to "disconnect" it from the system drive, so I can still restore to a new drive if I have a disk failure.

I did that with DP3, but didn't remove it. It took up <700mb and booted up fine from the USB.

 

[baryon]

Isn't it dangerous to have the recovery partition always on your computer? I mean anyone who has access to your computer could just format your hard drive without having to enter any password or anything. It would only take a few clicks and a few minutes... Isn't this an issue?

 

[Mal]

Isn't it dangerous to have the recovery partition always on your computer? I mean anyone who has access to your computer could just format your hard drive without having to enter any password or anything. It would only take a few clicks and a few minutes... Isn't this an issue?

That's never been difficult. If someone gets physical access to your machine, you're probably screwed if they want to harm the data on it anyways. In fact, all they'd have to do is boot with Cmd-S and mount the drive, then "rm -rf /" and the whole drive would be screwed up anyways. No more difficult.

If you're paranoid about that kind of problem, you'll have a firmware password set anyways.

jW

 

[zorinlynx]

Isn't it dangerous to have the recovery partition always on your computer? I mean anyone who has access to your computer could just format your hard drive without having to enter any password or anything. It would only take a few clicks and a few minutes... Isn't this an issue?

You can set an EFI password. Once set, you have to type in this password to do anything other than boot to the default device.

Even without a recovery partition this is a good idea on any machine someone else might have access to. All it takes is a USB stick with OS X installed on it and someone can have access to all your data.

 

[kashyap02004]

How to remove the Lion recovery partition?

Any one know how to remove the OS X 10.7 Lion recovery partition?

This is what I have done so far:

I booted with the OS X 10.6 disk.
Went to the disk utility.
I saw two partitions (Macintosh HD and Boot Camp).
I removed Macintosh HD.
I installed OSX 10.6 on Macintosh HD partition.

I still see the LION recovery partition in the boot option.

 

[macmongral]

Any one know how to remove the OS X 10.7 Lion recovery partition?

This is what I have done so far:

I booted with the OS X 10.6 disk.
Went to the disk utility.
I saw two partitions (Macintosh HD and Boot Camp).
I removed Macintosh HD.
I installed OSX 10.6 on Macintosh HD partition.

I still see the LION recovery partition in the boot option.

Try asking on the apple dev forums I am sure you will get the correct info there

 

[xgman]

I'm not sure you can use Lion without the recovery partition. Even if you removed it, then you would have a small blank partition on your drive?

 

[Rubydoppler]

Try asking on the apple dev forums I am sure you will get the correct info there

Many many on this forum aren't registered devs with the preview, plus it would be nice to have the information out here in the free zone.

 

[mrapplegate]

Many many on this forum aren't registered devs with the preview, plus it would be nice to have the information out here in the free zone.

Though I have not tried it, I would suggest people read the man page for diskutil

Then try diskutil list and see your hidden partition. Then use diskutil erasevolume and erase that partition.

 

[skate71290]

are you sure it's not just the unallocated space (100mb for me, noticeable under Windows Bootcamp installation, and i think it's reserved for System, not sure why, probably government tracking crap or something, i'm probably wrong lol) but anyways, re-install SL and when booted off the disc, open Disk Utility and format the HDD (not the Macintosh HD partition) and check available space against total space, if that doesn't fix it, try your luck at the Apple Store, because 4GB is quite a lot of space, well for me anyways lol

 

[mrapplegate]

are you sure it's not just the unallocated space (100mb for me, noticeable under Windows Bootcamp installation, and i think it's reserved for System, not sure why, probably government tracking crap or something, i'm probably wrong lol) but anyways, re-install SL and when booted off the disc, open Disk Utility and format the HDD (not the Macintosh HD partition) and check available space against total space, if that doesn't fix it, try your luck at the Apple Store, because 4GB is quite a lot of space, well for me anyways lol

The partition is there and hidden. The command diskutil list shows it. No need to adjust your tin hat
/dev/disk0
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: GUID_partition_scheme *500.1 GB disk0
1: EFI 209.7 MB disk0s1
2: Apple_HFS Macintosh HD 499.2 GB disk0s2
3: Apple_Boot Recovery HD 650.0 MB disk0s3

 

[kashyap02004]

Finally removed it

Just erasing the Macintosh HD partition did not remove the lion recovery partition.

Finally I selected the Hitachi hard drive that contains Macintosh HD partition and then clicked on erase. After that, I installed OSx 10.6 on it. And now the Lion partition is finally removed. Kind of stupid.

 

[Atarikid]

When you remove the entire partition where Lion is installed, you also remove the backup 'partition' (I guess)

 

[kashyap02004]

No it does not.

When you remove the entire partition where Lion is installed, you also remove the backup 'partition' (I guess)

No it does not remove the recovery partition when you remove the partition where Lion is. You have to remove the entire hard drive.

 

[netnothing]

No it does not remove the recovery partition when you remove the partition where Lion is. You have to remove the entire hard drive.

Any updates to this since Lion was released?

I started this thread to ask a similar question:
https://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?p=13143228

Bascically, I'm finding that if I erase just the Lion install partition on an External drive.....that is removing the Recovery HD partition as well.

-Kevin

 

[Yuusharo]

Just erasing the Macintosh HD partition did not remove the lion recovery partition.

Finally I selected the Hitachi hard drive that contains Macintosh HD partition and then clicked on erase. After that, I installed OSx 10.6 on it. And now the Lion partition is finally removed. Kind of stupid.

Think about what you just said. Erasing just the Macintosh HD partition doesn't remove the Lion Recovery partition by definition - they're *separate* partitions. This is the same story on Windows PCs that ship with a hidden recovery partition on the boot drive, allowing the user to completely wipe the boot partition and reinstall with a fresh copy of Windows without needing a disk.

Frankly, I don't understand why someone would want to delete the Recovery Partition. It's great knowing that I can reboot and perform basic disk cleanup on my Macbook Air without worrying about losing that little USB key. I had a situation a few months ago where I needed to boot into recover to restore to a working backup, but was unable to do so since I left the drive back at home. The laptop was effectively dead all day until I got home. Now, I'll never need to worry about that situation again.

And of course, I have an offline installer I made just in case, but I would only need that once in a great while.

 

[netnothing]

Think about what you just said. Erasing just the Macintosh HD partition doesn't remove the Lion Recovery partition by definition - they're *separate* partitions. This is the same story on Windows PCs that ship with a hidden recovery partition on the boot drive, allowing the user to completely wipe the boot partition and reinstall with a fresh copy of Windows without needing a disk.

Frankly, I don't understand why someone would want to delete the Recovery Partition. It's great knowing that I can reboot and perform basic disk cleanup on my Macbook Air without worrying about losing that little USB key. I had a situation a few months ago where I needed to boot into recover to restore to a working backup, but was unable to do so since I left the drive back at home. The laptop was effectively dead all day until I got home. Now, I'll never need to worry about that situation again.

And of course, I have an offline installer I made just in case, but I would only need that once in a great while.

Take a look at the end of this thread:
https://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?p=13143228

After some testing, its' showing that Lion is doing some weird things with the recovery partition. If you wipe the primary Lion install....on a Lion system you don't see the Recovery HD anymore. However, it wasn't erased.

-Kevin

 

[Yuusharo]

Take a look at the end of this thread:
https://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?p=13143228

After some testing, its' showing that Lion is doing some weird things with the recovery partition. If you wipe the primary Lion install....on a Lion system you don't see the Recovery HD anymore. However, it wasn't erased.

-Kevin

Work blocks dropbox, so I can't see the images =(.

It sounds like there's some odd behavior going on with the Lion Recovery. However, that doesn't change the fundamental issue of the Lion Recovery partition being a separate partition. Erasing only your boot partition won't erase the recovery partition by definition and by design.