Format Recovery Partition

[dead_smed]

I've got a 2011 11" Air currently running 10.7 that I would like to format and install a clean copy of 10.8 from a DVD.

I think I remember reading awhile ago that a complete format of the SSD caused problems with a missing internet recovery partition and users were unable to restore it / reinstall with the 10.7 DVD and a visit to the Apple Store was needed to fix the problem? Is this something I need to worry about or can the 10.8 installer replace this missing partition if needed?

 

[Weaselboy]

I'm not sure what you read or what people may have done to get sideways, but a default install of Lion or Mountain Lion will create a Recovery HD partition on the drive.

Maybe you read something about people cloning from one disk to another and that not creating a Recovery HD partition?

 

[dead_smed]

Thanks Weaselboy, I've installed 10.8 without any issues. I must have dreamt it all up.

 

[krravi]

I'm not sure what you read or what people may have done to get sideways, but a default install of Lion or Mountain Lion will create a Recovery HD partition on the drive.

Maybe you read something about people cloning from one disk to another and that not creating a Recovery HD partition?

Talking about partitions, I enabled the "Debug" mode in disk utility and looked at my partitions.

Saw the following

Macintosh HD - 990 GB
Recovery HD - 670 MB
EFI - 207 MB

What is that EFI Partition for?

 

[mfram]

EFI is boot support.

 

[halledise]

Thanks Weaselboy, I've installed 10.8 without any issues. I must have dreamt it all up.

you can erase the recovery partition by starting up from a USB stick which has a recovery partition on it.
then you wipe everything on the internal flash storage, but when you clean install ML, the first thing the installer does is to create the new recovery partition.

at least that's how I understand it to work - not that I'm necessarily 100% right - just ask the missus.