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Cloning my platter drive to an SSD. Why have a recovery partition ?

Using SuperDuper, a clone of my new perfected internal platter drive was made to an external USB platter drive. When I replace the 750 GB internal platter drive with an internal SSD then clone the external back to the SSD, there will not be a recovery partition.


Have also made a 10.74 bootable recover USB thumb drive and it works fine.


QUESTIONS:

1. Will the bootable 10.74 recovery thumb drive do everything the internal recovery partition would have done ?

2. Other than convenience of not needing the bootable USB thumb drive, what is the advantage of having the recovery partition internally ?

3. If the internal recovery partition is very useful compared to the USB, how does one transfer the external SuperDuper clone back to the new internal SSD and still have a recovery partition on the SSD ?


Interestingly, made a dmg master of the USB bootable thumb drive saved to the internal drive, then burned it to a DVD, and the DVD is not recognized as existing by the MBP.


4. Is there a way to make a bootable DVD which acts like the recovery partition and the recovery thumb drive ?

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.7.4)

Posted on Aug 5, 2012 2:21 PM

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Posted on Aug 5, 2012 4:49 PM

superduper doesn't clone the partition when you clone your drive....Carbon copy does....


1. answer - yes.....it is however, much better to create a lion installed thumb drive so you don't have to download anything when using a usb thumb drive installer.


2. when you don't have a usb installer - booting via command + r, you will have the disk utility menu when booting via recovery drive.


3. you have to use Carbon Copy Cloner to do that.


4. Click here on steps how to create a bootable lion dvd installer.


good luck...

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Question marked as Best reply

Aug 5, 2012 4:49 PM in response to MacPcConsultant

superduper doesn't clone the partition when you clone your drive....Carbon copy does....


1. answer - yes.....it is however, much better to create a lion installed thumb drive so you don't have to download anything when using a usb thumb drive installer.


2. when you don't have a usb installer - booting via command + r, you will have the disk utility menu when booting via recovery drive.


3. you have to use Carbon Copy Cloner to do that.


4. Click here on steps how to create a bootable lion dvd installer.


good luck...

Aug 6, 2012 9:15 AM in response to MacPcConsultant

Use Carbon Copy Cloner, it clones the Recovery partiton along with EFI etc.



Any way to add Disk Warrior to that Recovery Partition, whether on the internal drive or bootable USB thumb drive ?


Not to the Recovery partition as it's a closed OS so nothing can be installed there.


However if you have DW installed on external OS X boot drive, cloned with CCC, then your set, just hold option key down and boot from that to use DW.


Boot USBthumb drives are slow, don't bother.



If this is for yourself, if you bother to zero erase all new drives once before formatting, and zero erase free space before partitioning a live system or copying a huge amount of data, you can eliminate DW and a lot of other problems from even occurring.


The concept is directory and just any data on hard drives fail due to bad sectors of magnetic media, if you can map nearly all of these off BEFORE laying your data or formatting the drive, it greatly improves the read speed and data retention of drives. Thus whalla, less problems of any sort.


I personally haven't needed DW at all in over 20 something years, I can understand if your working on others machines you likely need it.


Reducing bad sectors effect on hard drives

Aug 7, 2012 6:29 PM in response to ds store

Eliminate DW ? DW has been a lifesaver, especially in low RAM situations. Often the VIB is off causing the spinning ball and decreased speed. There's a reason why the Apple "Geniuses" at the retail stores use DW.


Are you stating that I should use Disk Utility to zero out the SSD before cloning to it from a SuperDuper external back up ?


Are you stating that I should not bother with the recovery partition internally since the USB thumb drive is an option ?


For the new poposed internal SSD, would you use Carbon Copy Cloner and thus have the internal recovery partition, or would you use SuperDuper and not have the recovery partition internally ?

Aug 7, 2012 6:44 PM in response to MacPcConsultant

every user will give you different suggestions on how to do things.....Their way works for them and my way works for me.....


what you should do is find something that works best for you.....


while i find superduper a great app when cloning drives - i only use them on macbooks that doesn't have any recovery partition. works great...


on 2011 and up macbooks however, I use carbon copy so I can create a recovery partition....


while it is a good idea to have a USB bootable installer (some won't agree), it's also good to have a recovery partition in the hard drive just in case something goes wrong and your can't find your usb installer.


the only problem with Carbon copy right now, if you're using the trial version, it's only good for 30 days...

Aug 9, 2012 9:08 AM in response to MacPcConsultant

CCC has it's own partition software (it only pops up if the hard drive you're cloning has a partition)....


I usually format/erase via Disk Utility then do the clone.....


Here are the steps I use....


Format new drive via DU - Clone with CCC - a popup will come up (if you have a partiton) asking you if you want to create the partition via CCC - click to create one then proceed with the clone.


Once the clone is done - install the new drive in your macbook - turn it on - if boot time is slow - then go to system preference - startup disk - select new drive as the startup disk.


That's about it...

Cloning my platter drive to an SSD. Why have a recovery partition ?

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