How do I repair a damaged HD recovery

I started up holding down the Command and R keys.

My iMac started into an install process, no recovery HD icon appeared. It has been doing this for a couple of hours. I am told this is normal for a slow internet connection.

There is a big OS ten X in the middle of the screen with a "working bar" across the bottom and "Installing" across the top of the big X.

Would show you a picture but don't know how...

Progress bar just looks like a blue and white barber pole on its side. Its been that way for about 4 hours now.

Been there, done that, can't access Lion install using this method. Nothing shows up in Apple Store Account. No Lion Install on current harddrive. So now what. Only thing that appears to work in restarting with Command And R. This has been running for over 4 hours and the Barber pole is still turning.

How do I get this install to go to an external drive, which I formatted for this yesterday. I followed the instructions on this link: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4718 ?

Barber pole still turning.....

The reason for this original post was because each time I tried to do a new install of OS 10.7.5 (Lion) and repair my recovey partition it would fail at the end of the install and give me this message:

It didn't matter whether I did a (Command, R) or (Command, Option, R) install or got Apple Tech support involved. Each time it failed close to end of the install.

After several frustrating days, this original post, and Apple Tech Support help (their final solution was to do a complete HD format and reinstall), I figured an easier way would be to delete the Recovery Partition and make the area for it bigger. It seemed like it was running out of room. Somewhere (probably in the first link below) I found the size of the original Recovery Partition and how much space is used by it on the HD. Mine seemed like it was a bit small.

At this point I had nothing to lose so this is how the problem was solved.

1. I deleted the recovery partition using the instructions from this link:

http://mac.tutsplus.com/tutorials/security/the-os-x-recovery-partition-what-it-i s-why-its-there-and-how-to-remove-it/

2. Using disk utility I resized the Mac OS Hard Drive to 1 GB smaller than max available space (I have two partitions--1 Mac OS and 1 Bootcamp). This is done by seeing how much space is available for this partition and then entering a size 1 GB smaller than is actually available. This leaves 1 GB of space for a new recovery partition.

3. Restarted from an external drive I had set up. Using the instructions from this link: http://www.macworld.com/article/1165337/create_a_bootable_lion_install_drive_for _newer_macs.html

You could also boot from a DVD if you aren't stuck with a new iMac and no DVD burner. How to make bootable DVD: http://subrosasoft.com/blog/tips-and-tricks/create-a-bootable-mac-os-x-10-7-lion -dvd

4. Installed a new Lion OS 10.7.5 from an installer I had burned to a DVD. I could have installed from the external drive but didn't have the installer on there at the time and my external drive is slow.

5. IT WORKED!!! No failed messages.

6. Restarted

7. Ran applicable OS 10.7.5 updates.