Recovery Disk Assistant created USB not a valid start-up disk

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Level 1

4 points

Recovery Disk Assistant created USB not a valid start-up disk

Booting from Recovery Disk Assistant created USB drive gives me a slashed circle with an eternally spinning grey wheel. Googling forums for the meaning of that symbol (and the fact that the machine never boots) leads me to believe that my recovery USB is somehow corrupted. This is repeatable -- erasing the USB key, repartitioning, re-downloading and re-installing using the Recovery Disk Assistant leads to the same error. I've verified that the USB drive is fully functional. I'm curious if there's anything obvious that I'm doing wrong here? Has anyone else experienced this?

The particulars are as follows.

- I followed the instructions here: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4848

- I have a 16 GB Corsair flash key, on which I have two GUID partitions: one 2 GB and one 14 GB

* intially, the 2 GB partition (the to-be recovery partition, even though the recovery files are ~650 MB) is formatted as a non-encrypted, Mac OS Extended (journaled) format

* the 14 GB partition is ExFat

- the Recovery Assistant finishes normally

- as expected, the recovery partition is not visible in Disk Utility, but exists:

$ diskutil list

...{snip}...

/dev/disk2

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: GUID_partition_scheme *16.0 GB disk2

1: EFI 209.7 MB disk2s1

2: Apple_Boot Recovery HD 650.0 MB disk2s2

3: Microsoft Basic Data Feigenbaum 13.7 GB disk2s3

- to test the recovery disk, I reboot, holding `option' and choose to boot from the recovery partion on my USB drive

* I'm using a non-retina, 2012 MBP with OS 10.8.5, if that matters

- normal start-up splash: apple icon

- boom: spinning wheel & slashed circle

MacBook Pro, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.5)

Posted on Oct 1, 2013 3:17 AM

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Answer 1

Barney-15E

Level 10

112,530 points

Oct 1, 2013 4:32 AM in response to suciar

Have you tried it without partitioning? Just a stab in the dark.

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Answer 2

R C-R

Level 6

17,782 points

Oct 1, 2013 5:05 AM in response to suciar

Have you verified that the Mac will start up from the Recovery System on its normal startup drive?

As I understand it, the Recovery Disk Assistant uses the Recovery HD partition on the startup drive as a basis for building the one on the USB drive, so if that is messed up somehow then a copy made from it would inherit the same problems.

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Answer 3

suciar Author

Level 1

4 points

Oct 1, 2013 5:27 AM in response to Barney-15E

Thanks for the suggestions! I didn't give this a go with a single partition, but I have resolved the problem.

Before finding the solution, I tried making a bootable clone of the MBP's recovery partition:

- enable Disk Utility's debug option from the terminal: defaults write com.apple.DiskUtility DUDebugMenuEnabled 1

- mounted the recovery partition in Disk Utility

- restored from the recovery partition to the desired partition on my USB drive

- made the partition bootable from the terminal: sudo bless --folder /Volume/{path}/System/Library//CoreServices

- rebooted from the new partition

I got the same result: slashed circle and a spinning wheel

Creating the USB recovery partition on my Mac Pro worked. I verified that it works on both machines before I saw R C-R's suggestion. What's really weird is that the MBP *will* start from its own recovery partition. Maybe the MBP's recovery partition is corrupted in a way that allows it to boot but not be copied? Maybe I've made an error elsewhere? Who knows. In any case, my problem is solved now and hopefully, this thread helps some other poor soul.

Thanks again for the suggestions! Much appreciated.

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