Cannot create recovery... solution?

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Level 1

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Cannot create recovery... solution?

Trying to install Mountain Lion over Lion. Only have the one partition on my drive, no Bootcamp, no filevault, no time machine, drive is Mac OS Journaled. Eveything is kosher, seemingly, according to Apple's instructions.

Yet...

Cannot create recovery. And I can't even continue. What's going on?

Tried installing from the DMG, didn't work. Burned to a DVD, doesn't work. It doesn't seem like this should be this difficult. And I can't find a solution that looks like it'll fit this.

iMac, Mac OS X (10.7.4)

Posted on Dec 10, 2012 1:42 PM

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Answer 1

Linc Davis

Level 10

209,535 points

Dec 10, 2012 2:58 PM in response to ttggray

Launch the Terminal application in any of the following ways:

☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)

☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.

☞ Open LaunchPad. Click Utilities, then Terminal in the icon grid.

Triple-click the line below to select it, then drag or copy the text — do not type it — into the Terminal window and press return:

diskutil list

Post any lines of output that appear below what you entered — the text, please, not a screenshot.

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Answer 2

ttggray Author

Level 1

0 points

Dec 11, 2012 6:01 AM in response to Linc Davis

/dev/disk0

#:	TYPE NAME	SIZE	IDENTIFIER
0:	GUID_partition_scheme	*500.1 GB	disk0
1:	EFI	209.7 MB	disk0s1
2:	Apple_HFS Macintosh HD	499.1 GB	disk0s2
3:	Apple_Boot Recovery HD	634.6 MB	disk0s3

/dev/disk1

#:	TYPE NAME	SIZE	IDENTIFIER
0:	Apple_partition_scheme	*4.8 GB	disk1
1:	Apple_partition_map	30.7 KB	disk1s1
2:	Apple_HFS Mac OS X Install ESD	4.8 GB	disk1s2

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Answer 3

Linc Davis

Level 10

209,535 points

Dec 11, 2012 7:37 AM in response to ttggray

OS X Lion: Installer reports "This disk cannot be used to start up your computer"

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Answer 4

ttggray Author

Level 1

0 points

Dec 11, 2012 10:47 AM in response to Linc Davis

That did it! Thanks for linking that. Not something I would've found easily. I tried doing something around 128mb, but it said it was too small to do, so I knocked off a gig or two and that was fine. I don't use the internal drive for a ton so I'm not going to miss a small percentage.

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