Recovery Partition is a small (650MB) hidden partition on your Mac’s internal hard drive which is hidden and reserved for common utilities such as Time Machine,Terminal, Disk Utility, Hardware Diagnostic tool and other built in set of utilities as part of the System Recovery. It even has Safari that you can use to,if the partition is accessible.
Starting from OS X Lion 10.7, Apple stopped shipping DVDs of its operating systems and started offering a built-in recovery partition that is created automatically for you during installation. There are, however, certain circumstances where this recovery partition is either not created during installation or damaged, removed or altered.
You must have the recovery partition working always for the recovery of your data or software. It’s better that you check your Mac’s recovery Partition beforehand until one day it’s damaged or missing. Here are the few steps to check if you have a recovery partition available and it works.
Fortunately for Mac users, there’s a built-in “boot disk” in the guise of the Recovery Partition. To boot from the Recovery Partition, restart your Mac and hold down the Option key. When the Mac restarts, you are greeted by icons for all of the available drives. One of the old Mac OS X utilities, Disk Utility, has received a makeover in macOS Sierra. The updated app now presents a streamlined appearance while retaining Your source for expert tips, special deals, commentary, reviews, and the latest tech news.
How to check if your Mac has a recovery partition? 1. The first step to check if you have a working recovery partition is to check the available boot option. Restart your Mac while holding down the Option key and see if it brings up the Startup Disks selection screen with Recovery HD. How to check if your Mac has a recovery partition? Note:- If you have FileVault encryption turned on, you can’t see the Recovery Partition by holding down the Option key at boot, instead you must hold down Command-R during start up to. If it does not boot into the recovery partition then move on to the next step to check if your Mac has a recovery partition. 2. Use terminal to check if your Mac has a recovery partition.
Open Terminal app from /Applications/Utilities and type the following command: diskutil list. (I). Quit the Disk Utility if it’s running then launch Terminal.app from /Applications/Utilities and type the following commands to show the Debug menu for Disk Utility: defaults write com.apple.DiskUtility DUDebugMenuEnabled 1 killall Finder (II). Reopen Disk Utility and look for “Debug” to appear on top next to “Help”.
Click on the Debug menu and select “Show every partition”. (III). Now you should see the ‘Recovery HD’(Recovery Partition) in the left-hand pane of the Disk Utility window although it will be grayed out until it is mounted. How to check if your Mac has a recovery partition If your Mac does not have the recovery partition, do not worry as there are options available to restore it. There has been no other method apart from, posted by Apple support for restoring the recovery partition. But before Reinstalling the OS X, you must try and then check if the Recovery partition is showing now. If you are using a Bluetooth keyboard, try using a wired keyboard if possible.
If the Recovery partition still doesn’t show up, you should look at reinstalling OS X. Take the back up of your data before you proceed for re-installation.
Additionally, you can also use a third party Apple script like or, to create the missing or deleted recovery partition. So this is how we check and restore the Recovery partition on a Mac. If you are unable to create a recovery partition for emergency rescue.
If you are an Apple user, you would probably know that when you install OS X (Lion or higher), it will automatically create a hidden recovery volume on your startup drive. This is so that when you encounter an emergency, you will be able to recover your device easily with 'Disk Utility' to repair a damaged hard drive, find information about your device's problem online, restore your device to its previous settings or reinstall OS X.
To further enhance your user experience, Apple lets you have a physical copy of OS X Recovery USB drive created with Disk Assistant. It is a great option to have because if your drive is brutally damaged, there is a possibility of not being able to use the recovery volume and you don not necessary have an internet connection all the time.
Therefore, having a physical copy would be like an insurance for your devices. Read on our side-by-step guide to help you with Disk Assistant on a USB stick. In order to create an OS X Recovery USB drive, you will need a few things:. A working recovery volume on your operating system startup drive-this is the source from where you will create a copy of the volume. A USB drive with at least 1GB storage space. If you do not have a working recovery volume on your device, you will not be able to follow through with these instructions.
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And remember that these instructions will not work if you have an older device model that is currently running on a newer operating system. How to Make an OS X Recovery drive with Disk Assistant When you clone the recovery volume on any partitions listed in 'Disk Utility', any data in the destination volume will be deleted.
Therefore, it is a good idea to prepare the USB drive before you create OS X Recovery drive with Disk Assistant, especially if there is a large amount of storage space in the USB drive. Create partitions in the new destination so that you will be able to have a dedicated section for the recovery volume. Once you have prepped the new destination,if needed, follow these steps to get you on the way of owning a physical OS X Recovery disk created with Disk Assistant.
Get the Disk Assistant, if needed Go to Applications Utilities to see if the 'Recovery Disk Assistant' is not available in the folder. If it is not, download it from. Wait for the download to complete and double-click on the 'RecoveryDiskAssistant.dmg' file in the 'Downloads' folder. It will create a file named 'Recovery Disk Assistant.app' into the 'Applications' folder. Select the new drive Connect a USB drive to your device and launch 'Recovery Disk Assistant'.
You will need to agree to the terms and conditions and wait until the wizard detects the external drives. Select the new recovery disk i.e. The USB drive you connected to your computer and click on the 'Continue' button.
Eject and keep the USB safe It should not take long for the system to create a clone of the original recovery volume. It will prompt you when it is done so that you can click the 'Quit' button to eject the USB drive. Make sure you keep the USB drive somewhere safe and easily accessible. Since the introduction of OS X Lion, Apple did away with recovery disks, but we know that while this is super convenient for many, having an actual recovery disk can be beneficial at times. This is the simplest and fastest solution to have available to you anytime, anywhere.