Gary645
Level 1 (5 points)
Mac OS X

Q: Yosemite recovery partition - gone?

Just installed OS 10.10 - seems the recovery partition/disk was not installed. How do we install it?

MacBook Pro (15-inch Mid 2010), OS X Yosemite (10.10)

Posted on Oct 16, 2014 5:13 PM

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Gary645

Q: Yosemite recovery partition - gone?

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  • by John Galt,

    John Galt John Galt Oct 16, 2014 5:21 PM in response to Gary645
    Level 8 (49,044 points)
    Mac OS X
    Oct 16, 2014 5:21 PM in response to Gary645

    The Recovery Partition is still there; it simply no longer appears in Startup Manager. The usual method for booting OS X Recovery still applies.

  • by lllaass,

    lllaass lllaass Oct 16, 2014 5:24 PM in response to Gary645
    Level 10 (188,764 points)
    Desktops
    Oct 16, 2014 5:24 PM in response to Gary645

    How did you make that determination?

  • by Ralph Landry1,

    Ralph Landry1 Oct 16, 2014 5:45 PM in response to Gary645
    Level 8 (41,782 points)
    Oct 16, 2014 5:45 PM in response to Gary645

    Have you tried doing a restart holding the Option key?  You should see all bootable volumes, including the recovery drive.  Mine shows up there.

  • by Jesse Merino,

    Jesse Merino Jesse Merino Oct 16, 2014 9:52 PM in response to Gary645
    Level 1 (35 points)
    Oct 16, 2014 9:52 PM in response to Gary645

    My Recover Partition is missing too, not just from the Startup Manager, but from startup screen (holding down the option key) as well.

  • by j.byerline,

    j.byerline j.byerline Oct 16, 2014 9:55 PM in response to Gary645
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Oct 16, 2014 9:55 PM in response to Gary645

    Boot your computer up using Command+R

     

    this should fix the issue.

     

    If it is still not there I would suggest reinstallation.

  • by John Galt,

    John Galt John Galt Oct 17, 2014 8:13 AM in response to Jesse Merino
    Level 8 (49,044 points)
    Mac OS X
    Oct 17, 2014 8:13 AM in response to Jesse Merino

    Jesse Merino wrote:

     

    My Recover Partition is missing too, not just from the Startup Manager, but from startup screen (holding down the option key) as well.

     

    That is Startup Manager. The Recovery Partition no longer appears as a separate volume in Startup Manager.

  • by JCC123,Helpful

    JCC123 JCC123 Oct 17, 2014 9:14 PM in response to Gary645
    Level 1 (45 points)
    Oct 17, 2014 9:14 PM in response to Gary645

    I read somewhere that if you enable FileVault during or after the install, the recovery partition will no longer show up if you hold the option key during bootup.  The reason being that FileVault uses it as a way to boot securely into your encrypted drive. The recovery partition is still there you just won't see it. You'll have to disable FileVault in order to see it again.

     

    Check to see if you have FileVault turned on?

  • by seduc,Helpful

    seduc seduc Oct 17, 2014 9:19 PM in response to Gary645
    Level 3 (510 points)
    Oct 17, 2014 9:19 PM in response to Gary645

    You can see your recovery partition in Terminal.app

    diskutil list

  • by ssls6,Helpful

    ssls6 ssls6 Oct 17, 2014 9:19 PM in response to Gary645
    Level 4 (2,869 points)
    Oct 17, 2014 9:19 PM in response to Gary645

    On most portables, a yosemite install will convert your hard drive or SSD into a core storage volume.  A core storage volume is used for things like fusion drives and more importantly file vault encryption.  When you have a core storage volume, holding the alt key will NOT give you boot options to select your main drive or recovery partition.  Recovery is still there but not as a separate partition.  Now you must hold the command-R key to access recovery.

     

    It is possible to revert the CS volume back to a normal volume if you haven't encrypted it yet.  You didn't ask about that so I won't go into details.

  • by vZesler,

    vZesler vZesler Oct 19, 2014 11:10 PM in response to Gary645
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Oct 19, 2014 11:10 PM in response to Gary645

    Got this problem too, after finish install new os Yosemite.

     

    On terminal use diskutil list command return this result:

    /dev/disk0

       #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER

       0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *480.1 GB   disk0

       1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1

       2:                  Apple_HFS Macintosh HD            418.5 GB   disk0s2

       3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk0s3

       4:       Microsoft Basic Data BOOTCAMP                60.8 GB    disk0s4

     

    But hold down option key during startup, in Startup Manager there have three partitions just no  Recovery HD there, but why is "EFI Boot" show up?

     

    PS: The file vault is turned on when i try to install Yosemite. and face some problems during first installation. and third time is ok, now file vault is off.

  • by henrik-kna,Helpful

    henrik-kna henrik-kna Oct 20, 2014 12:30 PM in response to Gary645
    Level 1 (5 points)
    Oct 20, 2014 12:30 PM in response to Gary645

    Run these 2 commands in a terminal.

     

    diskutil cs list

     

    and then

     

    diskutil coreStorage revert lvUUID

     

    where lvUUID is the last lvUUID reported by the previous Terminal command.

     

    Then restart for everything to get back to normal after you have run these commands in Terminal.

     

    Then also the recovery partition will show up again in the startup manager when you boot up with the option key.

  • by Fabian Ramirez,

    Fabian Ramirez Fabian Ramirez Oct 20, 2014 6:12 PM in response to henrik-kna
    Level 1 (105 points)
    Oct 20, 2014 6:12 PM in response to henrik-kna

    henrik-kna,

     

    YOU are the man!  Even thought I could have just used the Command-R to get to the Recovery Partition, I prefer the Option key at boot method and that Terminal sequence worked!

     

    Thanks!

  • by RGordon13,

    RGordon13 RGordon13 Oct 21, 2014 12:06 PM in response to Fabian Ramirez
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Apple Music
    Oct 21, 2014 12:06 PM in response to Fabian Ramirez

    So, same problem here which I was able to solve with henrik-kna's solution.  My question is why did Apple make the change in the first place and what have I done to my system by reverting it back to original?

  • by Fabian Ramirez,

    Fabian Ramirez Fabian Ramirez Oct 21, 2014 1:19 PM in response to RGordon13
    Level 1 (105 points)
    Oct 21, 2014 1:19 PM in response to RGordon13

    My educated guess is that since I didn't select to use FileVault, for some reason a flag was set.  Now, this happened on my wife's MacBook Air (4,2).  This did not happen on my iMac (7,1), Mac mini (6,2), or MacBook Pro (5,1).

     

    My assumption is that since I didn't choose to use FileVault, a flag was set.  Using the Terminal commands, DiskUtil reset the flag to a "normal" volume and not a CoreStorage volume.  And by using the lvUUID, we're specifying the logical volume, specifically the Recovery Volume, by its Universally Unique IDentifier.

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