Hidden "Boot OS X" partition, what does it do?

[kot]

What does this thing do? I cannot see it in the Finder and I'm wondering what it is for. Might it be some kind of malware disguising itself as a legitimate piece of OS X code.

 

[mrapplegate]

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What does this thing do? I cannot see it in the Finder and I'm wondering what it is for. Might it be some kind of malware disguising itself as a legitimate piece of OS X code.

It should be the recovery partition. Nothing to worry about.
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4718

Wait, it's only 35MB, it can't be the recovery partition. I'm not sure now. I don't run BootCamp so I don't know how those look in Disk Utility. Do you use it? Is Boot OS X used to boot into Windows?

 

[GGJstudios]

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What does this thing do? I cannot see it in the Finder and I'm wondering what it is for. Might it be some kind of malware disguising itself as a legitimate piece of OS X code.

There is no Mac OS X malware in the wild that creates a separate partition. It is not a malware issue. It looks like either a partition was created, possibly for backup purposes, or the OS X Recovery partition was renamed. Have you looked at the contents to see what's there?

 

[Weaselboy]

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What does this thing do? I cannot see it in the Finder and I'm wondering what it is for. Might it be some kind of malware disguising itself as a legitimate piece of OS X code.

You are not alone. It appears to be a new boot EFI partition on the Time Machine disk added with 10.8.2.

Maybe Apple is getting ready to give up a true, bootable Time Machine disk?