Todd@Oz wrote:
The recovered contents didn't include creating a new Recovery Partition.
Wow, that's seriously messed up crap there.
I don't use TimeMachine, but I didn't know it doesn't also copy the Recovery HD partition.
Ok, I'll tell you what you have to do. Disconnect TimeMachine.
1: Get a blank powered external drive equal to or slightly larger than your boot drive.
2: Get a 1GB USB Thumb drive
3: Use Disk Utility to Erase with Security Option Zero the external drive, it's going ot take awhile, maps off any bad sectors.
4: Format the USB under Partition: options GUID and format OS X Extended -J
4.5 Download Carbon Copy Cloner and clone your OS X partition to the external drive, the default setting is fine and it's going to take awhile.
5: Copy this software to the USB
https://support.apple.com/kb/dl1433
6: Go find a "friend" with a Lion Box that will let you run Admin, transfer the software and install it
7: Run the software and target the USB, it will copy his Recovery HD to the USB
8: Go back to your machine, option key boot off the clone and check it out, neat, good.
9 Erase with Zero the entire internal drive drive from the clone, wait till done
10 reboot off the USB holding the option key and boot off it, install the Lion Recovery onto the drive.
11. option key boot off the clone and reverse clone onto the OS X partition.
now your all set.
Reducing bad sectors effect on hard drives
https://discussions.apple.com/community/notebooks/macbook_pro?view=documents