HT203543: If Find My Mac is dimmed and you see 'Recovery system update required'

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fyrfyt3110

Q: "Find my Mac" says "Recovery Partition Required".

"Find my Mac" says "Recovery Partition Required" after recently replacing my HDD with a Solid State Drive. I used Carbon Copy Cloner to mirror the hard drive before install. I am looking for some help to get this fixed on my Late 2011 Macbook Pro.

MacBook Pro, OS X Yosemite (10.10)

Posted on Dec 14, 2014 6:47 PM

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Q: "Find my Mac" says "Recovery Partition Required".

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  • by Kappy,

    Kappy Kappy Dec 14, 2014 7:08 PM in response to fyrfyt3110
    Level 10 (270,428 points)
    Desktops
    Dec 14, 2014 7:08 PM in response to fyrfyt3110

    You did not transfer the Recovery HD from your old drive. CCC does not do that unless you specifically set it up to do so. Had you used Disk Utility instead it would have cloned the Recovery HD automatically. If you cannot restore the Recovery HD from your old hard drive to your new SSD, then you cannot use Find My Mac.

     

    At this point you can try the following:

     

    Reinstalling OS X Without Erasing the Drive

     

    Boot to the Recovery HD: Restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the COMMAND and R keys until the menu screen appears. Alternatively, restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the OPTION key until the boot manager screen appears. Select the Recovery HD and click on the downward pointing arrow button.

     

    Repair the Hard Drive and Permissions: Upon startup select Disk Utility from the main menu. Repair the Hard Drive and Permissions as follows.

     

    When the recovery menu appears select Disk Utility. After DU loads select your hard drive entry (mfgr.'s ID and drive size) from the the left side list.  In the DU status area you will see an entry for the S.M.A.R.T. status of the hard drive.  If it does not say "Verified" then the hard drive is failing or failed. (SMART status is not reported on external Firewire or USB drives.) If the drive is "Verified" then select your OS X volume from the list on the left (sub-entry below the drive entry,) click on the First Aid tab, then click on the Repair Disk button. If DU reports any errors that have been fixed, then re-run Repair Disk until no errors are reported. If no errors are reported click on the Repair Permissions button. Wait until the operation completes, then quit DU and return to the main menu.

     

    Reinstall OS X: Select Reinstall OS X and click on the Continue button.

     

    Download and install the 10.10.1 update.

     

    Note: You will need an active Internet connection. I suggest using Ethernet if possible because it is three times faster than wireless.

     

    Also see:

     

    Reinstall OS X Without Erasing the Drive

     

    OS X Yosemite- Reinstall OS X

     

         Note: You will need an active Internet connection. I suggest using Ethernet

                     if possible because it is three times faster than wireless.