Why does Mac force boot to the recovery partition even when an external recovery option is selected? This disables the option of reformatting the internal drive because it is in use running the recovery partition.I have yet to find a viable solution.

Question

Why does Mac force boot to the recovery partition even when an external recovery option is selected? This disables the option of reformatting the internal drive because it is in use running the recovery partition.I have yet to find a viable solution.

To make a very tedious story short, My Mac decided that it would crash and not reboot the OS. I decided to bite the bullet and just reformat, sacrificing my very important data. I have tried just about every trick in the book. There is one one major problem I am facing. When I try to reformat the internal HDD using Disk Utility. It fails to unmount. "Make sure that all applications and files are closed on this disk.", Suggesting that the computer is ignoring my command at startup to boot from my external recovery drive, and using the Recovery partition on the problem drive, making it impossible to reformat the drive. When the internal drive is removed and connected by another method it is not recognized.

I failed to read the fine print on the box that suggested I purchase another Mac to fix problems with my primary Mac because any utility with the potential to fix the problem can only be run on a functioning Mac.

MacBook Pro, OS X Mavericks (10.9)

Posted on Dec 15, 2013 8:43 AM

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Answer 1

LowLuster

Level 6

12,105 points

Dec 15, 2013 9:00 AM in response to Donnieval4life

Booting to any version of the Recovery system, the built in partition on the internal drive, a recovery partition on an external drive or from the Online internet system will not stop you from formatting the Macintosh HD partition on the internal drive. So your problem is not that you are booting from the internal Recovery HD partition. It is probably your internal hard drive has problems, failing.

You could try booting the system from the Online system. At startup hold down the Option/Alt + Command + r keys and keep them held down until you see a globe on the screen. That will boot the system from across the internet from the Apple servers completely removing the internal drive as a boot source. If you still can't erase and format or repartition and format the internal drive then your drive has problems and will need to be replaced.

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