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Why there are two recovery partitions?, Why there are two recovery partitions?

I bought a MacookPro from Mid 2012 and it was installed Mac Lion.

After several upgrades, is is currently install Mac Mavericks.

I and trying to install BootCamp on my Mac but I found a weird thing on the partition schema that it has 2 recovery partition.


The disk layout is as follow:


$ diskutil list
/dev/disk0
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: GUID_partition_scheme *1.0 TB disk0
1: EFI EFI 209.7 MB disk0s1
2: Apple_HFS Macintosh HD21 321.3 GB disk0s2
3: Apple_Boot Recovery HD 650.0 MB disk0s3
4: Apple_HFS HDD2-2 677.2 GB disk0s4
5: Apple_Boot Recovery HD 700.0 MB disk0s5


In other to install BootCamp, I need to make my disk as a single partition.

That means I need to delete the HDD2-2 partition and merge it into the Macintosh HDD21.


As what I read in some other discusssions, after installing BootCamp, I can split the Macintosh HDD21 again to make a Data partition as is is now (HDD2-2). However, the number of partitions must not be more than 4 partitions. This means if I have 2 recovery partitions, I cannot do this.


I wonder why I have two recovery partitions? Can I delete one of them? If yes, which can be deleted?


Thanks.

Macbook Pro 7.1, Mac OS X (10.6.3)

Posted on Apr 30, 2014 8:05 AM

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Question marked as Best reply

Posted on Apr 30, 2014 9:04 AM

You might have 2 Recovery HDs because:


1 - Two OS Xs were installed into separate partitions (e.g. OS X Lion in one and OS X Mavericks in the other).

2 - If you use Carbon Copy Cloner (CCC), maybe you added a Recovery HD to your HDD2-2 volume from CCC in error.


It should be easy enough to do what you want to do. You can use Disk Utility to mount your 2nd Recovery HD then delete it and delete your HDD2-2 volume.


To display ALL your partitions via Disk Utility, open Terminal and type: defaults write com.apple.DiskUtility DUDebugMenuEnabled 1. Then launch Disk Utility and you should see a Debug menu item in the menu bar. Click on Debug then select Show All Partitions. Now you can mount the second Recovery HD (disk0s5) and delete it. Once you delete the HDD2-2 and extra Recovery HD, resize your Macintosh HD21 to take all the free space.

15 replies
Question marked as Best reply

Apr 30, 2014 9:04 AM in response to tcanvn

You might have 2 Recovery HDs because:


1 - Two OS Xs were installed into separate partitions (e.g. OS X Lion in one and OS X Mavericks in the other).

2 - If you use Carbon Copy Cloner (CCC), maybe you added a Recovery HD to your HDD2-2 volume from CCC in error.


It should be easy enough to do what you want to do. You can use Disk Utility to mount your 2nd Recovery HD then delete it and delete your HDD2-2 volume.


To display ALL your partitions via Disk Utility, open Terminal and type: defaults write com.apple.DiskUtility DUDebugMenuEnabled 1. Then launch Disk Utility and you should see a Debug menu item in the menu bar. Click on Debug then select Show All Partitions. Now you can mount the second Recovery HD (disk0s5) and delete it. Once you delete the HDD2-2 and extra Recovery HD, resize your Macintosh HD21 to take all the free space.

Apr 30, 2014 9:22 AM in response to keg55

Thanks keg55.

I can now see all partitions in the Disk Utility. However, I cannot Delete the partition but can only Erase instead. After erasing, I cannot merge (or resize) other partition into the erased partition because erasing a partition will create a new partition. How can I delete a partition using Disk Utitlity? Thanks.

Apr 30, 2014 9:38 AM in response to tcanvn

Ok then. I believe you mentioned in your 1st post you know you need to delete your HDD2-2 partition so you only have one (Macintosh-HD21) so you can install BootCamp. If you have a back up of your HDD2-2 partition, go ahead and select it then click the '-' sign to delete it. If it works you should have free space underneath Macintosh HD21. Show another screenshot, please.

Apr 30, 2014 9:52 AM in response to tcanvn

Hang on... you still need to do the back up at some point but you can cancel it and do the following if you want or wait until your back up is completed. It's up to you.


You want to keep the HDD2-2 partition and just split it into a 3rd, right? If so, you can delete the extra Recovery HD another way.


Open Terminal from /Applications/Utilities.

Type diskutil list. You should see the same layout as what you have in your 1st post. If not STOP HERE and show me your diskutil list. Otherwise, type diskutil eraseVolume HFS+ ErasedDisk /dev/disk0s5 <---- this will erase the Recovery HD and rename it.

Do another diskutil list and disk0s5 should now show as ErasedDisk.

Now type diskutil mergePartitions HFS+ MacHD disk0s4 disk0s5 <--- this will merge ErasedDisk into HDD2-2.

Type diskutil list again. You should not see the 2nd Recovery HD. Now you can do whatever you wanted to do with HDD2-2 and BootCamp.


But DO A BACK UP of HDD2-2 before you work with BootCamp just to be on the safe side so you don't lose that data.

Apr 30, 2014 6:55 PM in response to keg55

Hi keg, I did as your direction and got the Recovery HD2 merged with the HDD-2 as follow:


/dev/disk0

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: GUID_partition_scheme *1.0 TB disk0

1: EFI EFI 209.7 MB disk0s1

2: Apple_HFS Macintosh HD21 321.3 GB disk0s2

3: Apple_Boot Recovery HD 650.0 MB disk0s3

4: Apple_HFS HDD2-2 677.9 GB disk0s4


I am merging the HD21 and HDD2-2 but I wonder that can I do this as these partitions are not contiguous.

Apr 30, 2014 7:39 PM in response to tcanvn

You can't merge them. You will have to delete HDD2-2 which will produce free space then grab the lower right corner of Macintosh HD21 and drag it down to fill in the whole partition so you have 1 partition.


Open Disk Utility.

Click on your drive name (1TB WDC WD.....) not the Macintosh HD21.

Click on the Partition tab.

Select HDD2-2 and click the '-' sign in the lower left corner of Disk Utility.

After you delete that partition you will see free space.

Drag the lower right corner of Macintosh HD21 to the bottom of the partition chart.

Click Apply which will give you 1 partition.

Apr 30, 2014 9:01 PM in response to keg55

Thanks so much keg, all partitioning works have been done.

However, I have problem with creating Windows USB installation disk in Bootcamp.

I modified the BootCamp Asistant to make it to be able to create USB Windows installation disk but with no luck.

I get stuck at the codesign step. As I do not have Apple certificate, I cannot sign the BootCamp Assistant after changing the Info.plist file.


$ sudo codesign -fs /Applications/Utilities/Boot\ Camp\ Assistant.app/

/Applications/Utilities/Boot Camp Assistant.app/: no identity found


I googled but haven't got any solutions for this.

Do you have any experience on this?
I would appreciate for your help so much if you can help me with this.

Why there are two recovery partitions?, Why there are two recovery partitions?

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