MacOS Big Sur - Recovery Partition gone?

Just followed the same procedure on a late 2015 iMac. Reinstalled macOS Big Sur from a USB drive (build 20B29).

Completely wiped the disk before install, diskutil shows that the recovery APFS container is there, but the machine still boots to Internet Recovery using cmd-R.

No Bootcamp. This seems to be a Big Sur issue. Searching for a way to manually fix the recovery partition, but most info seems to be outdated.

Followed same procedure on a 2020 iMac, that one boots into recovery just fine. Also wiped disk and performed clean install.

It is still there, I booted up into recovery to turn System Integrity Protection off. The structure seems to have changed when viewed in disk utility, cannot see the recovery volume.

Apologies folks... me being dumb. It simply needs to boot from the USB installer, then use terminal to access the Recovery Partition.

I have this issue too. Updated to 11.0.1 Big Sur when it was released to find out the recovery is gone. After yesterday's huge 11.26GB 11.1 update (yes do not ask me why mine was not 3GB) I thought Apple would be reinstalling everything including the Recovery Partition. Unfortunately no recovery from HDD in 11.1 too 😞

MacBook Pro 15" 2015

It is rather disappointing. I have an early 2015 MacBook Pro and decided to upgrade to a new M1 model while giving the old one to my wife. To make sure she got a clean fresh build, I wiped the entire drive and removed Boot Camp partition and created one APFS volume on the entire drive using a Big Sur Install USB drive. There were no issues with installation and Big Sur is all setup. But when all done, while diskutil list command still shows an APFS Recovery volume on the disk, Command+R goes straight into Internet Recovery to an older version of OSX. I can't find any information on why that is or how to access the Big Sur Recovery Partition without booting using the USB installation drive.

As a side remark, the new M1 MacBook's disk shows a 5.4GB Apple_APFS_Recovery partition which is separate from the APFS Recovery Volume within the APFS container disk. The latter looks the same as on the 2015 MacBook with Big Sur which, however, lacks the large recovery partition. I am not sure if that's somehow relevant to the lack of local recovery boot on the older MacBook Pro.

I can feel your frustration, 11.2.1 wiped my SSD out. Something jacked up in the Partition table. I have tried several different ways to approach this. When Catalina is installed from the recovery menu, Terminal shows sw_vers as 10.15, which is correct. After upgrading to Big Sur 11.2, it reverts back to 10.12.6. At that point, it does not show the internal hard drive or allow me to access my Time Machine backups. This is frustrating. I refuse to use the Migration Tool. After trying it 4 times, it doesn't seem to want to pull all of the data over. I even went back to Catalina and rebuilt the recovery partition, showing 10.15. That was wiped out when I had to upgrade back to 11.2. I hate to assume, but I figure it the versions have to match up in order to restore the system. This quite a pickle and I needed this thing back up and running two weeks before. Also on a side note, while you can load into the recovery menu with a USB flash installer, you can not load a whole Time Machine backup, it prompts you to use the Migration Assistant. Apple needs to fix the issue or improve on the Migration Assistant otherwise a Time Machine is not helpful in the event of a drive failure.

It doesn't delete the Recovery volume.

You likely have a problem with your Recovery volume if it goes straight to Internet Recovery.

I don't know what caused it to be bad or how to fix it.

Same problem with my 2015 iMac. Worse, Internet Recovery attempted to install El Capitan, which hung. I had to Google to find out a workaround to set the date to when the OS was released.

Seems like a major defect.

How was it possible to 'boot off the USB installer? I try to select it in System Prefs / Startup Disk but it refuses to show up! I hold the Alt key while booting and select it, then hold cmd-R but it just goes to Internet Recovery. What's the secret? Thanks

Since only a handful of Big Sur devices are in the wild only they can use Internet Recovery.

I don't think any of that changes the fact that there is likely something wrong with the Recovery volume.

Same here. I have a Mac Pro (2013). Just updated and find that cmd-R goes direct to internet recovery. This is a significant problem as I need to disable SIP to be able to use my eGPU.

I assume you followed the instruction on Apple support how to create the usb media? (https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201372)

Once created it will show up when you hold the alt key during boot.

What do you mean by using terminal in recovery to access your recovery partition?! On my end Command +R always goes to internet recovery.

MacBook Pro 2015 15”.