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My recovery partition disappeared?

RedRaven571

RedRaven571

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Mar 13, 2009
1,128
114
Pennsylvania
So, this is really weird, I had a recovery partition after clean install; I saw it a few times when holding down the option ket while rebooting. Today, just for the heck of it, I tried to look up my Mac in find my iPhone and it wasn't there.

I saw that find my Mac was grayed out in iCloud because there was no recovery partition, when I checked, I didn't have a recovery partition. Apparently, it vanished sometime.

What happened?
 
Any suggestions?

The only thing that comes to mind is I installed Paragon NTFS; any chance that could have caused the partition to vanish? :confused:
 
I can't think of anything you could do unintentionally that would erase the recovery partition. Run the below command in Terminal and post up the output. That will show you if you have a Recovery HD partition.

I'm wondering if you had the USB installer key plugged in and that is where you saw the recovery partition on option key boot?

Code: 
diskutil list
 
Last login: Tue Nov 26 07:57:02 on ttys000
josephs-mbp:~ josephsomerville$ diskutil list
/dev/disk0
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: GUID_partition_scheme *1.0 TB disk0
1: EFI EFI 209.7 MB disk0s1
2: Apple_HFS OS X Mavericks 877.0 GB disk0s2
3: Microsoft Basic Data BOOTCAMP 122.9 GB disk0s3


Ya know, I am completely embarrassed to admit this but I think I never had the recovery partition on this mac. We have 4 macs: my 15" MBP, my 2 kids 13" MBPs and my wife's iMac.

I always do stuff to my MBP first, as a guinea pig, before messing with anybody else's. When I originally installed Mav, I used a process to create the USB installer that didn't result in a recovery partition. Subsequently, I created a new USB installer that created the recovery partition and used it on the wife and kids' Macs but, now that I think about it, I don't think I ever went back and reinstalled Mav on my MBP.:eek::eek::eek:

So, if I redownload Mav from app store (or use the new USB installer), I can do an 'upgrade' install over the exiting Mav OS on my machine, without losing data/apps, and it should create a recovery partition, correct?
 
You will need to do a clean install, no upgrade. There are guides to add it on an existing install but not worth the hassle.
 
RedRaven571 said:
So, if I redownload Mav from app store (or use the new USB installer), I can do an 'upgrade' install over the exiting Mav OS on my machine, without losing data/apps, and it should create a recovery partition, correct?
Click to expand...

Yes, if you just download Mavs from the App Store and run the installer again it will create the recovery partition for you. It will only update the OS, and it will not erase your data. Backup first though just to be safe.

----------
jpeezy said:
You will need to do a clean install, no upgrade. There are guides to add it on an existing install but not worth the hassle.
Click to expand...

That won't be necessary. I think you may be referring to a process that just adds the recovery partition without a reinstall. If you just do a reinstall over top of the existing install it will make a recovery partition.
 
I may do a backup and reinstall over the existing OS, to get the recovery partition, but not in any particular hurry.

Thanks to both of you for your suggestions and help (and for not pointing out that I'm a moron) :eek:
 
Yes, I have!

In my case, SuperDuper deleted my recovery partition. Guess I should have used Carbon Copy Cloner instead.

I ran the above utility over the weekend. First you need the Mavericks installer DMG file from the App Store. When you run the recovery utility, a dialog box pops up. Just drag the Mavericks installer DMG on the dialog box and wait. (This part wasn't documented very well.) It may take awhile before you see any indication it is working. Once it is done, you will create a PCK file to install from. It restored my recovery partition without rebooting.

Hopefully you will have the same luck!

Steve
 
skallal said:
Yes, I have!

In my case, SuperDuper deleted my recovery partition. Guess I should have used Carbon Copy Cloner instead.

I ran the above utility over the weekend. First you need the Mavericks installer DMG file from the App Store. When you run the recovery utility, a dialog box pops up. Just drag the Mavericks installer DMG on the dialog box and wait. (This part wasn't documented very well.) It may take awhile before you see any indication it is working. Once it is done, you will create a PCK file to install from. It restored my recovery partition without rebooting.

Hopefully you will have the same luck!

Steve
Click to expand...

Hey Steve, I tried it and it created the recovery partition! Unfortunately, it borked my bootcamp install by changing the boot partition for the Windows partition but, with a little internet help, I got it squared away. Recovery partition and a working Bootcamp partition.

Thanks for the suggestion!

Joe
 
Weaselboy said:
Yes, if you just download Mavs from the App Store and run the installer again it will create the recovery partition for you. It will only update the OS, and it will not erase your data. Backup first though just to be safe.
Click to expand...

I decided to just try this since I had the backup, the extra time, and just felt more comfortable with this approach.

FWIW, it worked, so I can confirm that this is good, too.
 
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