MY MAC MINI WHICH I PURCHASED USED HAS NO RECOVERY PARTITION

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MY MAC MINI WHICH I PURCHASED USED HAS NO RECOVERY PARTITION

Im a Mac newbie, not a computer newbie since I have been a power PC user since 1985. But there are things that are extremely different with Mac. Windows for example, if I were to damage my boot drive, I could just pop in a USB drive that could boot that perticular version. Then it had 2 options. Install or repair. Often it was just a matter of maybe I changed hardware around. The disk or drive would repair the MBR and all was good. I just had the same thing happen to me with the Mac. I plugged in a 8 GB thumb drive and downloaded the latest version of OS X Mavericks. Not knowing what to do next, I clicked next. Picked the thumb drive. Then it restarted. Holy cow, nothing. Thank God I had a CCC of the original partition. Was able to boot the computer than went to the Disk manager and repaired my internal SSD. I do still have the second hard drive with the now updated clone of my working drive but I really wanted to use that drive which was the original 1TB drive from my mac mini. I replaced that one with a 250 GB SSD. Then I moved my HOME folder to a 3TB Promise Smartstore DS 4600. That unit has the Apple firewire 800 and so my mac mini is very fast. There was no way I could use the SSD for everything.

Anyway, drifting here. Is there a way like windows has to have a small partition on my SSD that should I screw something up like I did this morning, I can press some F button, a repair option comes up and Viola its all repaired with out having to plug in a different hard drive.

Mac mini, OS X Mavericks (10.9.1), I7 2.3ghz 16 gb ram SSD 240 GB 1TB

Posted on Mar 19, 2014 12:38 PM

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Answer 1

Király

Level 6

10,017 points

Mar 19, 2014 12:57 PM in response to guitarbodydotnet

I read your post a few times and couldn't be sure if you had a second working Mac besides the Mac Mini? If you do, use it to make an OS X recovery volume on a USB thumb drive with this utility. You can then boot your Mac Mini with it and install OS X.

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Answer 2

Mar 19, 2014 1:34 PM in response to guitarbodydotnet

Mac OS X, since version 10.7, automatically creates a recovery partition. Information on how to acces the partition is here:

http://support.apple.com/kb/ht4718

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Answer 3

Mar 20, 2014 8:31 AM in response to Eustace Mendis

No, I have owned 2 nice laptops in the past but ended up selling them quickly out of frustration my work at the time required so much PC software that it was annoying trying to figure out what I needed. The 2 laptops just seemed like expensive toys to me. I always thought Sony was quality and have had 4 expensive Sony laptops besides all of the PC towers I built. Well my first Sony laptop is still running from way back in 2001. No battery though. But the last one I purchased 2 years ago. Full of bells and whistles. Intel I7 quad core, same as my mac now. It worked famously , installed a 250 gb SSD the same one now in my Mac. One morning it just wouldn't power up. I could always handle a crashed disk or something but no power. I said the **** with it. No more PCs besides I've had multiple iPhones now and multiple iPads . They have been wonderful. Still require windows sometimes but now I've got Windows 8.1 in BOOTCAMP plus OS X Mavericks. It doesn't get better. I'm using the Mac OS first now every day only going to windows if needed and that is less and less. So short answer. I have only one Mac for now. But I refuse to purchase another PC. Everything Apple is much more money except the Software. I like the FREE OS updates instead of depending 500 bucks every time Windows comes put with a new OS. Lots to get used to since I've been all PC since 1985 and my first dual floppy drive PC followed by my BIG 10 MB hard drive PC. Then someone told me about a 1gb HD. You kids can't imagine that when I was born B&W TV had just come out! So I've seen so much technology growth that young people must feel like it was always like this! Funny! I can't wait to see what the future brings. I really glad I was one of the fer older people to keep up with Tech. Lots o people my age are now sorry they didn't because thn they just assumed this stuff was just novel! Now many need help just turning one on! Very amusing ! Thanks for the help!

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Answer 4

Mar 20, 2014 8:48 AM in response to guitarbodydotnet

Would you mind breaking down you first post?

What do you have for a Mac?

What do you have for hard drives?

Any other information would be helpful.

What was the USB drive all about, what were you trying to do there?

I can tell you this, Migration Assistant is your friend.

Here's an example of what I've done. I installed a SSD in my Mac Mini. Did a complete clean install. Went through the process of "signing up" for Mac OS. But when it got to the point of choosing to move files/profiles from another Mac, Windows or create new profile. I had chosen to move over from another Mac. However, I didn't have another Mac. Sooo I plugged my old hard drive into an adaptor to USB. Plugged in the USB and when Migration Assistant recognized it as another "Mac" it allowed me to transfer everything from it. (Or pieces that I want if I didn't want everything).

KOT

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