Recovery partition on OS X Mavericks!

Making a USB copy is convienent but not required to install Mavericks. A lot of people say they want to do a clean install but then migrate their data and apps which is not really a clean install at all. Your end goal is to install Mavericks on your SSD which you can do by just clicking on the installer and selecting the SSD. It will overwrite ML and keep all your settings, programs, data. I personally think this is the best way to install. Setup assistant or migration assistant are more trouble than they are worth often leaving you with ACL issues.

The question is "if your download is bad, installing over your SSD could fail" and that would not be fun. So, if you have a clone of your system or a good TM backup and a ML installer, you can atleast recover if the install fails. If you want to test your new mavericks installer, create a partition on your external and run the installer on that partition. If all goes well, at least you know your installer is good and installing on your SSD less risky.

Full disclosure:

I have installed over ML on two machines, I also tested installing on a blank HD and then ran setup assistant, I have also installed on a blank HD and manually added users (I was testing). Of all the methods, just installing like apple wants you to (download then let it rip) was the least hassle.

The USB creating help you recieved should have worked. I'm not sure why it didn't. I can only assume either your Mavericks download or your USB stick is questionable.

That's the method that started me down this path...... and I too followed it to the letter.

Do you have a working ML installation on your SSD now? If you type this in terminal, what is the output?

diskutil list

ssls6 wrote:

Do you have a working ML installation on your SSD now? If you type this in terminal, what is the output?

diskutil list

Currently in Internet Recovery and re-downloading ML. Will let you know as I can.

Good luck.

I used this method to build a bootable USB stick, then I used that stick to upgrade my system to Mavericks. After the upgrade, I have a working Recovery Partition. I don't know if you did an upgrade or a clean install, but for my upgrade, it worked as expected.

BTW, as a word of warning, If you use this method to make your bootable USB stick, make sure you use the correct volume label in the place where the provided example uses "/Volumes/Untitled", otherwise you could erase the wrong disk volume...

Okay, I now have ML again.

Downloading Mavericks again (in case the last download was corrupt)....

Ran terminal and entered diskutil list - the results are;

/dev/disk0

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: GUID_partition_scheme *751.3 GB disk0

1: EFI 209.7 MB disk0s1

2: Apple_HFS Macintosh HD 750.4 GB disk0s2

3: Apple_Boot Recovery HD 650.0 MB disk0s3

Toms-iMac:~ Home$

Wow, fantastic 750GB ssd and the partitions look great. After you download mavericks try to make the USB again. It's very odd that you're having trouble making one. Try a different USB if you have one. Sorry you're having trouble.

i think that is the best way for have everything working right 🙂

nope. You don't need a clean install.

It's not the easy way or the best way.

Apple designed this as an over write new OS.

this is Mac OSX here,...it's not "throwing another burger on top of the bun"

Success!

After almost 30 minutes, the USB drive was setup with the installer files and I was able to do a clean install of Mavericks (the only thing that worries me is that it had to install OSX 2x - the first time it was just stuck at the "few seconds left" mark and then it started to install itself again without any issues).

Hi,

I tried to install Maverick straight from the App Store and I get "

a recovery system can’t be created

I see in the terminal I have a Recovery Partition for Mountain Lion in addition to my Boot Drive. Ideally I want to upgrade rather than a clean install, as I have loads of apps and documents.

I don't use Boot Camp and have nothing funky going on with my boot drive (no raid etc,)

From some other posts I understand if I could delete the current recovery partition and extend the ML partition to fill the empty space, I could probably install Mavericks using the upgrade and it would then create a new recover partition.

I tried to create a boot drive using iPartiton (which I just bought) but when I boot into the boot drive made by iPartition, it doesn't let me launch the iPartition app (it doesn't appear in the menu and the open command isn't working in the terminal). Using DIsk Utitility may be an option if I enable the debug mode, show the recovery partition, delete it and extend the main boot partition, but it sounds rather risky, and not even sure if this will help me!)

Has anyone else faced this error and found a way to use the upgrade from the App Store to update ML?

I've had the same issue and solved it simply running the installer again, the one downloaded from the store. It didn't delete anything, so go ahead. It took 35 - 45 minutes to finish, but when it did, the Recovery partition was back there.