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After installing ML on larger Partition, can't install Lion on smaller

I have an iMac 11,2 in 3 partitions. One which I've used the past 8 months that had Mountain Lion to test the applications, one which I had Lion, and one that had the factory Snow Leopard. My testing complete, I installed Mountain Lion on the Lion partition. The old Mountain Lion partition I erased with Disk Utility. And using my USB Flash drive I tried to install Lion. I had other things happening on my network that time that the network traffic of an installer would interrupt, and didn't think the Flash drive installer needed an internet connection. Well it appears it does. Cause when I got to the point of creating a replacement recovery partition it baulked. Rebooting from the Flash drive it sat there for 6 hours and did nothing but say "Installing." The next reboot since I figured nothing was working, revealed my new Mountain Lion partition was still fine, and so was my 10.6 partition. But reformatting the new Lion partition I wasn't able to get the installer to stop believing the installation had failed. I'm thinking I need to find the failed created Lion Recovery partition and erase it, but I don't know how. Any thoughts on the matter?

OS X Mountain Lion, * Links may give me compensation

Posted on Feb 2, 2013 6:03 AM

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Posted on Feb 2, 2013 6:10 AM

If you want to see the recovery partition on Disk Utility you need to turn on debug mode in DU. To do that enter


defaults write com.apple.DiskUtility DUDebugMenuEnabled 1


in the Terminal. Then once you have the Debug menu you'll see a menu item to show all partitions. The EFI and recovery partitions will be visible.


regards

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Feb 2, 2013 6:10 AM in response to a brody

If you want to see the recovery partition on Disk Utility you need to turn on debug mode in DU. To do that enter


defaults write com.apple.DiskUtility DUDebugMenuEnabled 1


in the Terminal. Then once you have the Debug menu you'll see a menu item to show all partitions. The EFI and recovery partitions will be visible.


regards

Feb 2, 2013 6:42 AM in response to a brody

That would be setting it on the Disk Utility that is on whatever volume you are running off of.


Not sure you would need it when you run DU while installing Lion. If you can boot into ML you will have access to the whole disk and you could wipe the Lion partition then and then boot the Lion installer. That should work.


If not you could try booting the Lion installer and then if there is a Terminal command run the defaults write command. I don't remember off the top of my head if you do have access to a terminal then you'll have to look.


But as I wrote I think if all you want to do is wipe the partition that Lion was on you could do that when booted into ML,

Feb 2, 2013 7:59 AM in response to Frank Caggiano

Not sure you would need it when you run DU while installing Lion. If you can boot into ML you will have access to the whole disk and you could wipe the Lion partition then and then boot the Lion installer. That should work.

I tried that, it still complained the installation was incomplete. And there is no debug mode on the ML Disk Utility, hence the question. Before I do this, I just want to make sure I don't erase the ML restore partition. Is there anyway to tell the Lion restore partition apart from the ML restore partition when you look at it in the debug mode of Disk Utility?

Feb 2, 2013 8:08 AM in response to a brody

On the Lion partition or on the Mountain Lion partition also?


Can you boot into recovery mode in Mountain Lion? if so the partition is there and for some reason it isn;t showing up in DU. If can't boot into recovery mode in ML then something is wrong with that install.


This is what it looks like on this MBP


User uploaded file

disk0s1 is the EFI partition the rest are self explanatory.

Feb 2, 2013 8:10 AM in response to Frank Caggiano

This is while I was booted into Mountain Lion, I tried the command line, and opened Disk Utility and got the menu you showed there. Then I chose List All Disks and nothing happened. I tried selecting the hard drive that had the partitions, as well as the partitions in question, and none would let me List All Disks, they just acted as if I hadn't selected anything. I tried a Force Update of the disk list to no avail.

Feb 2, 2013 9:11 AM in response to a brody

So the 10.8 downgrade to 10.7 is the partiton you're trying to make Lion and the other the 10.7 upgrade to 10.8 is the current working ML partition? And I'm guessing the screenshot was taken while booted in ML.


What does it look like of you select the physical drive 1 TB xx Media and select the partiton tab in DU (not looking to repatiton just looking to see whats shows) You should just see the OS partitions. Post a screen shot.

After installing ML on larger Partition, can't install Lion on smaller

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