Q: how do I re-install a recovery partition on my MacBook Air?

See if your MBA is on this list, and if so, download and install the appropriate EFI Firmware ROM.

There is no such thing as an Internet Recovery Partition. Do you mean the standard Recovery Partition

Once more, there is no partition for Internet Recovery, please try and understand, Internet Recovery is on the Internet, not on your Mac, do you understand this, can we proceed?

grahamfromkingston wrote:

 

Thanks, but it is a mid 2012, so that it not the issue

Since your Mac should be equipped for that, are you using Cmd+Option+R to access Internet Recovery without success?

Were you using the beta prior to installing El Cap.

You have two recovery partitions. The internet one and the one one your hard drive. You can't erase the Internet version as it's built into the firmware so to speak.

I Am assuming you mean the recovery partition on your hard drive.

IT may be missing but actually still there if you enabled file vault during the upgrade. File vault encrypts your hard drive for protection.

What many people don't know is that it may use your recovery partition as the startup partition before you can log in as OS X cant touch your regular partition until you enter your password.

Now... What happens is that the partition is still there but not as an option when you start up.

HOwever this this may not be the case, but it may.

There are 3 ways to get your recovery partition back if it is actually missing.

Starting with the  safest method first but not necessarily quickest.

1. Download El Capitan from the App Store and reinstall it right on top of the existing version. It "should" create the recovery partition.

2. Download El Capitan and make a bootable USB stick and do a clean install of elcapitan. But this will erase everything so make sure your data is backed up and/or off your hard drive. You will essentially be starting from scratch with a fresh clean quick operating system but you will have to reinstall all your apps and data or restore from a backup.  This will add the missing recovery partition.

if deciding on this route start a new question or do a search on how to to a clean install of el captan.

3. If your not afraid of terminal commands: This is quickest but it's command line so you make your call

open terminal in system preferences you may have to type the command sudo in front of each of these commands and enter your password if you're met with a permission denied error.

Run these 2 commands in a terminal.

diskutil cs list

and then

diskutil coreStorage revert lvUUID

where lvUUID is the last lvUUID reported by the previous Terminal command.

Then restart for everything to get back to normal after you have run these commands in Terminal.

Then also the recovery partition will show up again in the startup manager when you boot up with the option key.

Reinstalling OS X should fix it, as would installing the 10.11 combo update (much faster) but, the combo has yet to be released. If it were me I'd wait for Apple to release the combo.

Recovery Partition Creator 3.8

Recovery Partition – Recreate Without Reinstalling