How can I create a recovery partition to use Find my Mac?

I would appreciate the advice of this community. Lots of very useful tips in this thread, but none that match everything that I hope to accomplish.

I too run Mt. Lion and wish to add a recovery partion. Here is my current 512 GB internal drive:

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: GUID_partition_scheme *512.1 GB disk0

1: EFI 209.7 MB disk0s1

2: Apple_HFS claw_sys 99.5 GB disk0s2

3: Apple_HFS claw 412.2 GB disk0s3

My primary system drive is claw_sys, but claw is also bootable in an emergency. Except for an "emergency" admin user on claw_sys, all my user data is on my user (claw) partition. (I first installed the OS and users on claw, then installed an OS on claw_sys, deleted user folders, and created an alias (ln -s) in their stead to corresponding user folder on claw.

(About 2 years ago, my university insisted I install SecureDoc full disk encryption, which destabilized my Mac. The SecureDoc uninstall corrupted my hard drive, and the configuration you see was after a Time Machine recovery. I believe Iost my recovery partitions at that time)

I have been holding off adding a recovery partion until upgrading to Mavericks but now winter break is here, and the upgrade is upon me.

I have a bunch of hardware which should make the job easier. I have a 1 TB SSD which will become my new internal drive. Currently, it is in an external enclosure with a USB3 cable. I would like to partion the SSD to have a ~150 GB system partition, ~850 user data partion, and at least one recovery partition. I would like both system and user data partions to be independently bootable as in my current arrangment.

I am paranoid, and I have both a clone and a time machine backup, but in principle, I do not need to erase my current 512 GB claw_sys/claw internal drive.

I would appreciate advice on how to partition the 1 TB SSD in preparation for Mavericks with both system and user paritions + recovery partion(s), and the sequence for installing on both paritions and migrating my user environments.

Does Apple now support separate system and user partitions in a native way? In the past, Applecare and Genius Bar staff declined to give advice about upgrades to a partitioned system.

Does it matter whether I swap the 1TB SSD with my current 512GB internal drive before or after the partition/OS installation/user migration onto the 1TB SSD?

In addition to the upgrade, I have a new 2TB external USB3 drive that I wish to configure as my backup after the upgrade. I would like to create two bootable partions on my backup drive that are exact-to the-byte sized clones of the drives on the 1 TB SSD. This allows block-level DiskUtility/SuperDuper/CarbonCopyCloner copy/restore in either direction. Recovery partitions would be desireable as well.

I am not afraid of the unix command line. In the past, I used the following command to set up a bootable clone backup to claw_sys and claw with exactly the right number of bytes but it took tedious trial and error to get the partition sizes correct, and there was no recovery partion in the mix. There has to be a better way.

diskutil partitionDisk disk3 3 GPT HFS+ lion_sys 99584220000B HFS+ lion 412316210000B HFS+ lion_tm 1412000000512B

Thanks much!

This script worked like a charm. I was happy not to have to do a reinstall to gain a recovery partition. Thanks!

Message was edited by: atomant7 http://musings.silvertooth.us/2013/05/recovery-partition-creator-3-0/