Problem with OSX recovery

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IanD1953 Author

Level 1

42 points

Problem with OSX recovery

I recently changed my HDD to a SSD on my MacBook Pro 13” mid 2012. Initially, I reinstalled OSX10.8 using Internet recovery. I then recovered my data from Time Machine but there was some issues because I had previous upgraded the OS from OSX10.8 to OSX 10.9 so I decided to use recovery mode (Command + R at start up) to do a new system installation from Time Machine and all looked fine. However, I have since discovered that the recovery mode was no longer working properly. If restart while pressing Command + R instead of accessing the recovery partition after a short delay it is going to Internet recovery.

I have checked the disc partitions and as you can see below Apple Boot Recovery HD partition is there. I can also select Recovery 10.9 if I start the machine while holding down Option and the recovery mode works fine if I use this method.

I also tried resetting Parameter RAM a few times and during one those attempt the machine came up in recovery mode.

My guess is that there is an issue with PRAM but has anyone any ideas?

/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 HD 798.3 GB disk0s2

3: Apple_Boot Recovery HD 650.0 MB disk0s3

4: Microsoft Basic Data BOOTCAMP 201.0 GB disk0s4

No CoreStorage logical volume groups found

MacBook Pro, OS X Mavericks (10.9)

Posted on Feb 6, 2016 5:28 PM

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Answer 1

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IanD1953 Author

Level 1

42 points

Feb 10, 2016 5:17 PM in response to IanD1953

After some further investigation I found a fix for this problem. I went back into App Store-my purchases, re-downloaded Mavericks and reinstall it.

A few useful discoveries:

A while back my HDD cable failed which is a common fault on the MacBook Pro 13”. The interesting thing was this happened when the Time Machine drive was connected. When I restarted the machine instead of going to the folder with the flashing question mark it loaded the Recovery partition on the Time Machine drive. This made me think that Command-R would search all the connected drives for a Recovery partition. I now know that it only looks for the Recovery partition on the main boot drive. If you want to use the Recovery partition on any other drive you need to restart while holding Option down and select the drive.

I am still puzzled why Command-R wouldn’t load the Recover partition on the main boot drive but clearly something didn’t work quite right when I changed the old HDD to a new SSD and reinstalled everything from Time Machine. I could launch the SSD’s Recovery partition if I restarted while holding Option down but not from Command-R. All that I can think of is that the Recovery partition was being seen as completely separate drive to the main boot drive.

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Answer 2

IanD1953 Author

Level 1

42 points

Feb 17, 2016 8:06 PM in response to IanD1953

I finally understand what happened. Installing 0S X 10.8 via internet recovery created the OS X Recover partition on the SSD. What I did wrong was then to use this the OS X Recovery stored on the SSD (Command-R) to reinstall OS X 10.9 from Time Machine. OSX Recovery uses the Recovery partition during the reinstall process so can not write to it. The confusing thing was that when I looked at the start-up manager it looks like the Recovery partition had been renamed from Recovery 10.8 to Recovery 10.9.

What I should have done was to use internet recovery or the OS X Recovery stored on the Time Machine disk to re-install OSX 10.9.

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