The OS X Recovery Partition: What It Is, Why It’s There and How to Remove It

The OS X Recovery Partition: What It Is, Why It’s There and How to Remove It

on Nov 1st 2012 with 32 comments
Tutorial Details
  • Topics: Security, Maintenance
  • Difficulty: Advanced
  • Estimated Completion Time: 25 Minutes

When you upgrade your Intel Mac from Snow Leopard to Lion, Snow Leopard to Mountain Lion, or even Snow Leopard to Lion and then again to Mountain Lion, the installation process creates a special “Recovery Partition”. There are, however, certain circumstances where you will want to remove this recovery partition. This article looks at what the Recovery Partition is, what it does, and why you might want to remove it. I’ll also walk you through the removal process.

Before We Get Started

For the normal Mac owner with a Mac running OS X 10.7 Lion or 10.8 Mountain Lion, there are few compelling reasons as to why the Recovery Partition should be removed. It takes up minimal space and provides handy tools in the unlikely event of problems with the machine.

It takes up minimal space and provides handy tools in the unlikely event of problems with the machine.

For the Mac owner with a Mac that has been upgraded from it’s original OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard operating system, then there are reasons why the removal of the recovery partition might be desirable.

First we’ll examine what the Recovery Partition is, and what it does, before deciding if it should be removed, and under what circumstances, with a step-by-step guide to doing so.

If you already understand the Recovery Partition and understand the implications of deleting it, head straight on to the section How Do I Delete the Recovery Partition?

What is the Recovery Partition?

The recovery partition is a new feature of OS X that allows you to restore system software to your Mac with just a few clicks, without the use of DVDs or USB drives.

It is, in essence, a small (650MB) partition on your Mac’s internal hard drive (traditional magnetic HDD or solid state disc SSD) that is ‘hidden’ and reserved for common utilities such as Disk Utility.

If you are having issues with your Mac, Recovery Partition allows you to repair the hard drive, erase the hard drive and install a new copy of OS X

If you are having issues with your Mac, Recovery Partition allows you to repair the hard drive, erase the hard drive and install a new copy of OS X, or even restore your Mac from a Time Machine backup. It even has Safari so that you can connect to the Internet and get help from Apple’s online support.

If your Mac requires the reinstallation of OS X, Recovery Partition will connect to Apple’s servers and download the operating system for you.

This makes a lot of sense since, from a user perspective, DVDs can be easily damaged and it is easy for critical system DVDs or USB drives to become mislaid if you are not the most organized of individuals. From Apple’s perspective, there is a huge cost-saving to be had in not having to produce and distribute countless DVDs or USB drives with the computers that it sells.

Furthermore, it might be said that this suits Apple’s marketing department as it fits with Apple’s continual drive forward in phasing out, what it perceives, as obsolete technologies in the same way that it has done in the past with serial ports, PS/2 ports, the 3.5” floppy disc and now the optical (CD/DVD) drive. The sorts of legacy technologies that remain for much longer in other personal computers.

How do I access the Recovery Partition?

Tip: To access the Recovery Partition, press and hold Command-R (or hold Option) immediately after the start-up chime just a few seconds after you turn on your Mac.

There are usually two ways to access the Recovery Partition when booting your Mac.

The first way to access the Recovery Partition is to boot your Mac and press and hold the ⌘ (Command) and R keys immediately after the initial chime sounds a few seconds after the machine is turned on. You must keep holding down both the Command and R keys until you see a window with “OS X Utilities” across the top in large text.

If the first method does not work for you, try the second method which works on any Mac.

The second way to access the Recovery Partition is to boot your Mac and press and hold the ⌥ (Option) key, located either side of the spacebar and marked as ALT on newer Mac keyboards.

Again, keep holding the ⌥ (Option) key until the appearance of a grey screen showing connected, bootable volumes. These are represented by icons of internal hard drives with the name of the respective bootable volume beneath them.

In this instance, you will need to select the bootable volume named “Recovery HD” by using the arrow keys to move the arrow to the appropriate icon. You will also have the option to connect to a local wi-fi network to access a Time Capsule or the Internet in recovery mode. There is also an option to choose a network, later, once you have booted into recovery mode. Alternatively, just ensure that you have an ethernet cable connecting your Mac to your network or direct to your router.

How do I use the Recovery Partition?

Regardless of which method you used, you will arrive at an OS X Utilities screen which gives you four options:

  • Restore from Time Machine Backup
  • Reinstall OS X
  • Get Help Online (Safari to browse Apple support website)
  • Disk Utility
OS X Utilities on the Recovery Partition
OS X Utilities on the Recovery Partition

The first three options will require a connection, either wired or wireless, to a local network or router. The second and third options will require your network or router have an Internet connection.

In the case of the second option, the OS X Utilities on the Recovery Partition allows your Mac to connect to the Apple servers to download the appropriate disc image, for your machine, to boot your Mac into recovery mode.

Why Would I Need to Delete the Recovery Partition?

The Recovery Partition essentially takes the place of the DVD installation disc that was previously shipped with new Macs. Instead of a physical DVD, the data is now on a hidden partition on your hard drive. This has immediate benefits. It also has drawbacks.

With the Recovery Partition, anyone can boot your Mac and reset your passwords.

With the Recovery Partition (and with the install DVD on pre-Lion Macs), anyone can boot your Mac and reset your passwords. This would enable them (with a little more knowledge) to potentially access your user accounts and personal data. It is also possible for tech-savvy children to bypass any parental controls that you have set on your Mac.

A physical DVD can be stored separately from the Mac, thereby reducing the potential for password resets on the system. This is not the case with a Recovery Partition.

If you are really paranoid about security then you may wish to consider deleting the recovery partition on your Lion or Mountain Lion Mac, but not before you have created a USB Recovery drive.

If your Mac originally shipped with OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard and you are restoring your Mac back to it’s original condition then you will need to remove the Recovery Partition. This is essential if you are selling your Mac or passing it on to a friend or family member.

How do I Delete the Recovery Partition?

If you are returning your Mac to it’s original OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard Operating System, you can do so by restoring a cloned copy or backup, if you have one, using Carbon Copy Cloner, SuperDuper! or Time Machine.

Alternatively, to install a fresh copy of Snow Leopard, use OS X Utilities to erase the hard drive before reinstalling the operating system. Be aware that this will not delete the Recovery Partition, for which you will need to follow the procedure below.

Step One

To confirm the presence of the Recovery Partition, open Terminal.app and enter the command:

diskutil list

Now press the return key. You will see some results similar to this:

Recovery Partition in Terminal
Recovery Partition in Terminal: Apple_Boot Recovery HD 650.0 MB

If you do not have a Recovery Partition, then there is nothing to remove. You’ve finished so quit Terminal.app.

If you do have a Recovery Partion, go back to Terminal.app and enter the command:

defaults write com.apple.DiskUtility DUDebugMenuEnabled 1

Then press the return key. This command enables the normally hidden Debug menu item in Disk Utility, which we are going to need for the rest of the procedure.

Step Two

Open the Disk Utility app. Now, in the menu bar at the top, select Debug > Show every Partition.

Revealing the Debug Menu in Disk Utility
Revealing the Debug Menu in Disk Utility

Following this action the ‘Recovery HD’ will be revealed in the left-hand pane of the Disk Utility window although it will be greyed out.

Tip: You will find the Disk Utility app in the Utilities folder inside the Applications directory.

Step Three

Select ‘Recovery HD’ and click the Mount icon, at the top of the Disk Utility Window, to make it active.

Selecting the Recovery Partition and Mounting it to Make it Active.
Selecting the Recovery Partition and Mounting it to Make it Active.

Step Four

You will see that ‘Recovery HD’ is no longer greyed-out and you can delete it using secondary-click on the mouse or trackpad or by using control-click and then selecting Erase.

Erasing the Recovery Partition.
Erasing the Recovery Partition

Step Five

This leaves us with a 650MB partition with nothing in it, so it makes sense to remove the partition and free up the space for the main (only) partition on your internal drive.

To do this, select the Partition tab, towards the top of the Disk Utility window, and click to select the small Recovery HD partition. Then click on the minus symbol, beneath, to remove it.

Deleting the Recovery Partition
Deleting the Recovery Partition

You will get a confirmation dialogue box which summarizes the action that you are about to perform. Read it carefully. Read it twice to ensure that you are performing the action correctly to remove only the Recovery HD partition. When you have confirmed the action is correct, click the box marked Remove.

Deleting the Recovery Partition
Slow down and read carefully before continuing

Step Six

If you wish, you can confirm that the Recovery Partition has been removed, return to Terminal.app and enter the following command:

diskutil list

If you have followed the instructions correctly, you should now see that the Recovery Partition has been erased.

Using DiskUtil List to check Recovery Partition has been removed
Using DiskUtil List to check Recovery Partition has been removed

If you take a look at Disk Utility, you will see that there is now only one large partition on your internal hard drive.

Recovery Partition has been removed
Recovery Partition has been removed

Step Seven

To turn off the Debug menu in Disk Utility enter the following command into Terminal.app:

defaults write com.apple.DiskUtility DUDebugMenuEnabled 0
Turning off the Debug Menu item in Disk Utility
Turning off the Debug Menu item in Disk Utility

And that’s it. Close Terminal and Disk Utility.

Conclusion

In this article we examined what the Recovery Partition is and why it is useful to OS X. We have also examined the reasons why you might want to remove it. Finally, we saw a step-by-step procedure to remove the Recovery Partition.

If your Mac came pre-installed with OS X 10.7 Lion, or 10.8 Mountain Lion, then there are going to be few reasons that make sense to remove the Recovery Partition. You are fairly safe to leave it as is. If your Mac came pre-installed with OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard and you are returned your Mac to it’s original condition (perhaps you are selling it or passing it on), then it makes sense to remove the Recovery Partition.

 
Enjoyed this Post?

Subscribe to our RSS Feed, Follow us on Twitter or simply recommend us to friends and colleagues!

By

Rollover to read this author's bio or click through to see a full list of posts by this author.

Online since 1995, I am interested in Macs, technology, ecommerce, photography, cycling and motoring. I am the co-host of a podcast and I spend a lot of time tinkering with Macs.  

Plus Premium
 
 
Note: Want to add some source code? Type <pre><code> before it and </code></pre> after it. Find out more
  • http://www.facebook.com/desideriortela Desidério Ortelá

    this was really nice, thanks!

    • http://twitter.com/johnny_winter Johnny Winter

      Thanks, Desidério.

  • Morgan

    Your articles are outstanding. Love your work.

    I have one question about removing the partition. Your instructions suggest that removing the recovery partition does not have to be destructive the to the main partition which for most people would be called ‘Machintosh HD’. Am I correct that using your method is none destructive to the Machintosh HD partition data?

    • http://twitter.com/johnny_winter Johnny Winter

      Hi Morgan, many thinks for your kind words.

      The procedure that I describe in the article is removing one of the two partitions on the hard drive. The command only removes the recovery partition. The main partition, usually named “Macintosh HD” remains intact and untouched.

      I have used the procedure described to revert a late-2009 iMac, which was running Mountain Lion, back to its original Snow Leopard version of OS X.

      DISCLAIMER: Of course, I should say, ensure that before you do anything you should have a backup of your data using Time Machine and/or SuperDuper! or similar. In fact, back up in at least two ways to half your risk of losing data. (look for articles on this site regarding backing up data)

  • eMaven

    In step 5 you say “This leaves us with a 650MB partition with nothing in it, so it makes sense to remove the partition and free up the space for the main (only) partition on your internal drive.”
    But in the disk listing window I still see the same sizes for disks 0,1,2. Yes, disk 3 is gone, but the space does not sem to be used for the main partition. Or is it just that 650 MB is too small a number when seeing 999 GBs?

    • http://twitter.com/johnny_winter Johnny Winter

      The intention of the article was to explain the purpose of the recovery partition and how to remove it, if required. This only deletes the partition, it does not reclaim the space therein. That said, and if my maths is correct, the partition represents only 0.065% of a 1TB hard drive so it’s not critical that we reclaim that space. A good point, though, thanks.

  • alasdairpage

    Hi Johnny,

    Excellent article, thank you. Please forgive these naive questions, but before explaining how to delete the recovery partition, you say:

    “If your Mac originally shipped with OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard and you are restoring your Mac back to it’s original condition then you will need to remove the Recovery Partition.”

    Why is that, and why is this not necessary with Lion or Mountain Lion?

    “This is essential if you are selling your Mac or passing it on to a friend or family member.”

    How come? If I want to sell my Mac, I’ll probably have a look for some tutorials on the best way to securely return it to factory condition for the lucky eBay winner, but why is it necessary to delete the recovery partition if/when passing your used Mac on to a new owner?

    Thanks!

    • http://twitter.com/johnny_winter Johnny Winter

      Hi Alasdair

      Thanks for taking the time to feedback with some questions.

      The recovery partition (on Lion and Mountain Lion) replaces the physical installation DVDs that shipped with Snow Leopard. In relation to your first question on removing the recovery partition when reverting to your Mac’s original Snow Leopard installation, as you will be using the Snow Leopard Install disc it is undesirable to have a Lion/Mountain Lion recovery partition on the hard drive.

      In relation to your second question, again I had in mind returning the machine to it’s original factory condition.

      In light of your questions, I concede that I should perhaps have stated that it is “desirable” rather than “essential”. If anyone does use the recovery partition to install Lion or Mountain Lion, their AppleID will be checked with Apple to ensure they are licenced to install it (ie: they have previously purchased it) before performing the full install.

      Where it is essential to remove the recovery partition, however, is in situations where it could present a risk of someone else using it to reset your passwords in an attempt to gain access to your data. It won’t necessarily prevent a person who is determined, but it will further inconvenience them.

      • alasdairpage

        Thanks for your response Johnny, and for answering both questions. :)

        I think I understand both points you’re trying to make. This is in a scenario where you originally start with Snow Leopard (and have an installation disc) and subsequently upgrade to Lion or Mountain Lion, which create (is that right?) a new recovery partition for those later operating systems.

        You’re saying that when restoring the Mac back to its original Snow Leopard condition, you should remove the subsequently placed [Mountain] Lion recovery partition for security. That makes sense.

        What you’re not saying is that if you started with [Mountain] Lion, that you should always remove the recovery partition when selling on your Mac, is that right? Because surely the recovery partition will be required to restore the Mac back to a virgin state by you (me) or by the new owner. Again, please excuse my naivety.

        • http://twitter.com/johnny_winter Johnny Winter

          Hi Alasdair. You are correct in your thinking. If you Mac is originally Snow Leopard, and you want to return it to original condition then remove the the recovery partition.

          If your Mac originally shipped with Lion or Mountain Lion then it is useful to leave the recovery partition untouched (this is the default behaviour – it is not straight forwardly removed). You can use the Lion/Mountain Lion recovery partition to reformat and zero out data on the main partition (usually named Macintosh HD). There are increasingly secure levels of zeroing out data (that take increasingly longer to perform) if you are security conscious and are selling the Mac. By leaving the recovery partition in place (default behaviour) you are able to reinstall a fresh copy of OS X onto the newly formatted hard drive (main partition).

          Note, if the recovery partition is removed, you can create a Lion / Mountain Lion USB recovery stick (8GB stick needed) and this procedure is explained in another tutorial on this website.

          Bottom line, for most people the recovery partition is going to be helpful. Whilst the article explains how to remove it, it shouldn’t really be necessary for most people. (I have restored the recovery partitions on my Macs, for instance)

      • mark

        Will not inconvenience at all: they just boot off a Live CD or USB.

  • http://www.facebook.com/robin.perkins.7334 Robin Perkins

    The question I have at the moment is – for those new Mac’s that have the ‘Fusion Drive’ (i.e. a HDD and a SSD) – is the Recovery Partition on the SSD, the HDD or both ? And how does Command + R know where to find it (i.e. can it be moved?)

    Being able to backup my Recovery Partition (and hopefully being able to move it to where I want it) has just been made a lot easier by your revelation of the hidden “Show Every Partition” menu – thankyou!

    I am currently trying to set up my Mid-2009 MacBook Pro to clean triple boot OS X ML, Windows 8 and Ubuntu 12.10 on a HDD and SSD combo – I got rid of my DVD drive since I don’t use it anymore (and I think it doesn’t work properly anyhow). By clean boot I mean boot using rEFInd as a boot manager and EFI booting all three OS since they can all finally do it (three cheers for 2012!) and as opposed to doing a dirty boot using Bootcamp that uses a BIOS emulation mode called “Compatibility Support Mode” and does nasty things to your disk partitioning, limits multi-gpu options and lengthens boot time. I have yet to see anyone write up an article on how to do this – perhaps a future article idea Johnny? For anyone interested there is a ton of information about EFI on the author of rEFInd’s website.

    • http://twitter.com/johnny_winter Johnny Winter

      Robin, interesting question on how it relates to FusionDrive.

      My understanding, so far, of FusionDrive is that it is an SSD and a conventional magnetic HDD that are “seen” as one volume by OS X software which moves frequently accessed data to the (faster) SSD section of the volume. i.e.: whilst two physical drives, OS X presents them as one.

      I can not confirm, but I would imagine that the recovery partition would remain on your drive either on the SSD or the HDD where ever OS X sees fit. (I would hazard a guess it will be on the HDD as it is infrequently accessed). Just as with the rest of your data you don’t really need to know whether its on SSD or HDD as OS X takes care of it for you.

      Thanks for your suggestion on multi-boot machines. That idea rather appeals to me, Robin! I do not know the answers to doing that (at the moment) but it will be something interesting to research. If you already have experience in this area feel free to hit me up on twitter @johnny_winter – sounds like you could be teaching me a thing or two!

      Again, thanks for the feedback.

      • Morkious

        Is there a way to reinstate the recovery partition? I’ve just put a Seagate XT 750 in two MacBooks by formatting the new drives and using time machine to reload Mountain Lion and all my data but the recovery partition is of course gone. Handy to have it for disk util etc without having to drag out the old snow leopard disk.

        • Johnny Winter

          Yes, to reinstate the recovery partition, just reinstall OS X. You can do this by following our tutorial to create a recovery USB stick.

          0. BACK UP IMPORTANT DATA BEFORE PROCEEDING

          1. Create recovery USB stick

          2. Boot from USB stick (hold option [ALT] key immediately after start up chime)

          3. Choose option to install OS X

          4. Wait for 30-45 minutes whilst OS X reinstalls the operating system

          5. Reboot into OS X from your main hard drive

          6. All of your data should be preserved and you will now have OS X and a restored recovery partition

          7. To check that the recover partition is there, run Terminal and type: diskutil list

  • Sam C

    IF You delete the Recovery Partition, you will not be able to use FIND-MY-MAC in case you lose or someone steals your mac.

    • http://twitter.com/johnny_winter Johnny Winter

      This is an important point to note to anyone who is thinking of doing this.

      That said, Find-My-Mac only works with iCloud which, in turn, only works with OS X 10.7 onwards. The example that I give in the article is about downgrading back to 10.6 Snow Leopard and this version does not have the iCloud features so its a moot point.

    • http://twitter.com/johnny_winter Johnny Winter

      It’s a moot point.

      Conclusion: “If your Mac came pre-installed with OS X 10.7 Lion, or 10.8 Mountain Lion, then there are going to be few reasons that make sense to remove the Recovery Partition. You are fairly safe to leave it as is.”

      Find-My-Mac is only compatible with OS X 10.7 Lion onwards, not with 10.6 Snow Leopard.

  • Graham Perrin

    Removing the Apple_Boot partition is extraordinarily poor advice for a user of FileVault 2.

    • http://twitter.com/johnny_winter Johnny Winter

      In my conclusion to the article I state: “If your Mac came pre-installed with OS X 10.7 Lion, or 10.8 Mountain Lion, then there are going to be few reasons that make sense to remove the Recovery Partition. You are fairly safe to leave it as is.”

      Furthermore, FileVault 2 was not introduced until OS X 10.7 Lion.

      Nowhere in the article have I told people that they should remove the recovery partition. I have only explained how it can be done and outlined a reason as to why it might be done. The intention is to impart knowledge and information through the tutorial for those who require it. It is not something that every OS X user should do.

    • http://twitter.com/johnny_winter Johnny Winter

      oops. duplicate response.

  • RoninQuinn

    Late to the party, but one thing that I am not clear on, and wonder if it will solve a problem is:

    After a ML upgrade on a 2010 Mac Mini Server, the ability to BOOT from SL-Server Disc’s is broken. Pretty much holding down “C” to boot from CD/DVD is dead.

    That said, will removing this partition *remove this restriction* and allow the original SL-Server media to BOOT the machine again? (In a perfect world, the restriction to boot from CD goes away, and I can leave ML on disc1, and install SL on disc2 of the Mac Mini Server)

  • Alan Goldberg

    Nice article although perhaps a tad dangerous for those with enough knowledge just to be dangerous ; – ).

    Any chance of a step by step on how to add apps to the recovery partition? More powerful tools like Disk Warrior?

    Excellent work – thank you

  • Peter

    Nice article, but I must say, removing the recovery partition really doesn’t add any security. A tech savvy user can still boot into single user mode by restarting their Mac and holding Command-S. This immediately gives them root shell access (without any authentication), giving immediate access to the entire file-system as well as standard terminal utilities to reset passwords.

    http://support.apple.com/kb/PH10795

    http://osxdaily.com/2011/04/25/change-admin-password-mac/

    • Mark

      This article is plain wrong: all turned-off machines can be taken over via physical access. No need to know abstruse Unix commands: booting off another operating system’s CD or USB will give you a newbie-friendly, root-access GUI.

      Removing the recovery partition does not bring any advantage and is dangerous. The article also has various blatant errors, for example, you are doing nothing more than a disservice to your friends if you sell ‘em a Mac without the Recovery, and there’s no need to delete it if “you are restoring your Mac back to it’s original condition”… on the contrary, you’ll need it to restore it again.

  • Cathy007

    I used the rm -rf command and completely screwed my system. Now it doesn’t boot up. All I see is a folder icon with a question mark in it. I don’t have the recovery cds. I don’t remember whether they didn’t come with the system when I purchased it or I lost them. Its a macbook pro 2009 with snow leopard on it, by the way. And I can’t order recovery disks from Apple as I am not currently in US and there is no Apple store in the entire country where I currently am. I was wondering whether:
    - Is it somehow possible to restore/recover/reinstall the system without the recovery/installation disks?
    - If I download this software (mountain lion) will I be able to install it on my system?
    - What can I do to make a bootable usb/dvd for my macbook pro as currently I cannot use it. I do have access to a pc and internet?
    - Will I lose all data after reinstallation? I shut down the computer as soon as I realized what the rm command was doing. It had deleted the root directory by then but my data files might still be there.
    Please please please help.

    • http://twitter.com/johnny_winter Johnny Winter

      rm -rf is a very dangerous command to be using. Unless you are particularly handy with terminal, I recommend you steer clear of it. If you are handy with terminal, it should be used with extreme caution.

      To answer your questions:

      - Is it somehow possible to restore/recover/reinstall the system without the recovery/installation disks?

      Yes, you can reinstall the OS from a retail version of the Snow Leopard install disc

      - If I download this software (mountain lion) will I be able to install it on my system?

      Yes, have a friend or colleague download and create a bootable USB drive with Lion or Mountain Lion on it. You can then set up the machine from this drive. You will be asked for your AppleID when you log in and Apple will check your entitlement to use the OS, I believe, so you will need to purchase it on your account.

      - What can I do to make a bootable usb/dvd for my macbook pro as currently I cannot use it. I do have access to a pc and internet?

      We have tutorials on this website. You need a friend or colleague with a Mac to help you.

      - Will I lose all data after reinstallation? I shut down the computer as soon as I realized what the rm command was doing. It had deleted the root directory by then but my data files might still be there.

      Yes, installation of new OS will wipe the system. If you believe there still to be data on the HDD, then you should look at data recovery options before you reinstall OS X on that HDD. You might need to remove the HDD from the MacBook and put it in an HDD Caddy and use some data recovery software.

  • cathy0007

    I used the rm -rf command and completely screwed my system. Now it doesn’t boot up. All I see is a folder icon with a question mark in it. I don’t have the recovery cds. I don’t remember whether they didn’t come with the system when I purchased it or I lost them. Its a macbook pro 2009 with snow leopard on it, by the way. And I can’t order recovery disks from Apple as I am not currently in US and there is no Apple store in the entire country where I currently am. I was wondering whether:
    - Is it somehow possible to restore/recover/reinstall the system without the recovery/installation disks?
    - If I download this software (mountain lion) will I be able to install it on my system?
    - What can I do to make a bootable usb/dvd for my macbook pro as currently I cannot use it. I do have access to a pc and internet?
    - Will I lose all data after reinstallation? I shut down the computer as soon as I realized what the rm command was doing. It had deleted the root directory by then but my data files might still be there.
    Please please please help.

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Ranvir-Kumar/100001039576184 Ranvir Kumar

    Yes that is right you will not be able to use FIND-MY-MAC, after you delete recovery partition. What I feel the best option to secure both your OS X and recovery HD is Mac cloning.

    Its a bootable copy of your complete Mac.

    The tool one can use is http://www.stellarclonedrive.com/

  • http://twitter.com/LucaCoralli Luca Coralli

    Hi Johnny! Nice guide! I used it to remove the Recovery Partition on my Mac: it had 1.4GB of size and I didn’t know why. Now I’ll go with a script and recreate it. By the way, is there a mode to recover those 1.4GB leaved free by your process? I couldn’t find those GBs in the Disk Utility, after doing your process… Thanks for your help.

  • Will

    Just really great instructions, especially re: removing Recovery Partition. Thanks for helping me prep my 2009 MacBook for sale.

  • salmonupstream

    Wow i’ve been searching all night for an answer to the message “This disk cannot be used to startup your computer” when attempting to reinstall osx snow leopard on a 2010 imac which had Mountain Lion previously installed. I purchased the imac second hand and the owner had erased the ML operating system. I couldn’t install Snow Leopard as the Macintosh HD disk image had an exclamation mark and the above message.

    I followed the advice on this support page http://support.apple.com/kb/TS3926 and stumbled across your article. The SL start up disk did not successfully load onto the partitioned HD.

    I have managed to delete the Macintosh HD partition, well it no longer appears on the disk utility and now there are no start up disks for the SL OS X to find to enable it to install.
    The debug menu item in your article does not appear in my menu list for disk utility (which is being accessed from the SL install disk)

    I have created a new Macintosh HD partition and have installed the SL OS X onto this volume. ( if so are there any particular settings that I need to ensure that I have in this partition)

    The install programme runs for 15 minutes and indicates that there are still 31 minutes remaining before popping up a window explaining that Mac OS X installation failed, the installer could not copy the necessary support files. Click restart to restart your computer and try installing again. I’d be very grateful for any advice that you or your readers can give me.

    Thanks