Yosemite recovery mode & emergency bootable usb flash disk

[cool11]

Why I do not see anymore, 'recovery disk' pressing 'alt' key during startup?
All the latest years in several mbp and with several osx versions, I had this option.
Now, I cannot see it anymore?
Why? Where it is?

Also I would like to make an emergency usb flash disk, to be able to boot, in case of internal hard disk failure.
Please believe me, before asking here, I tried many things I found on internet.
A program called Diskmakerx, does not work.
Terminal commands, using an already downloaded installer of yosemite in /applications folder, did not worked too.
I also tried to find and download a full copy image of Yosemite, about 6gb filesize. I tried to restore it to a usb flash disk using Disk utility, but although it transfer it, it does not shown up for selection when I press 'alt' key during startup.
Please, help me find the most straight and easy way, to make such a bootable flash disk.
Please give me some help from something you have tried yourself, not just a link of an article, that it is supposed to work, but it does not. (tried so many things).

 

[macenied]

You might have been converted to CoreStorage. Press <Command> - R at system startup ( when you hear the "chime" ) and it should boot the recovery partition.

 

[jbarley]

You might have been converted to CoreStorage. Press <OPT> - R at system startup ( when you hear the "chime" ) and it should boot the recovery partition.

I believe that should be CMD+R at startup.

 

[NoBoMac]

From the sound of things, OP is trying to copy the install DMG, which probably won't work, hence the

sudo /Applications/Install\ OS\ X\ Yosemite.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia [switches here]

which worked for me perfectly. Format the USB drive as GUID, partitioned.

To make a bootable recovery partition on a USB device:

1. Disk Utility
2. Format external drive as Mac OS Journaled GUID
3. Mount HDD’s Recovery partition
4. From Terminal: sudo chflags nohidden /Volumes/Recovery\ HD/com.apple.recovery.boot/BaseSystem.dmg
5. Disk Utility, click on Restore
6. Finder to above BaseSystem.dmg. Select and drag over to “Source” on Disk Utility Restore
7. In Disk Utility, select and drag over destination drive to “Dest” field
8. Click Restore “do it” button
9. Remove BaseSystem.dmg from Disk Utility side bar

 

[cool11]

You might have been converted to CoreStorage. Press <OPT> - R at system startup ( when you hear the "chime" ) and it should boot the recovery partition.

I just tried it. It loaded nothing.
At least, by just pressing 'alt' key alone, I can see mbp's own internal hard disk. But once more, nothing else.
Where is the recovery mode?

 

[Weaselboy]

I just tried it. It loaded nothing.
At least, by just pressing 'alt' key alone, I can see mbp's own internal hard disk. But once more, nothing else.
Where is the recovery mode?

Confirm you have tried holding command-r when booting to get to recovery?

With Yosemite it converts the drive to a core storage volume and this causes the recovery option not to appear in the startup manager from an option key boot, but it is still there with a command-r boot.

Enter the command below in Terminal and you should be able to see the 650MB recovery partition there.

diskutil list

 

[cool11]

Confirm you have tried holding command-r when booting to get to recovery?

With Yosemite it converts the drive to a core storage volume and this causes the recovery option not to appear in the startup manager from an option key boot, but it is still there with a command-r boot.

Enter the command below in Terminal and you should be able to see the 650MB recovery partition there.

diskutil list

With this terminal command, I was able to see that it exists.
But pressing option/alt - R during boot, does not altered the usual way the mbp gets into osx.

 

[Weaselboy]

With this terminal command, I was able to see that it exists.
But pressing option/alt - R during boot, does not altered the usual way the mbp gets into osx.

Can you boot to recovery by holding command-r at boot? Note... command not option key.

 

[macenied]

i made a mistake by writing <OPT> - R. It should be <Command> - R as people already mentioned in this thread. I corrected my posting.

 

[cool11]

Pressing cmd+R keys allowed me to access to recovery mode.
Thanks.

 

[cool11]

Recovery mode/disk/partition, resided in the same internal hard disk of mac?
Or is it flash-based or something else?
I want to know in case of a hardware disk failure, if it will be possible to load the recovery mode.

 

[macenied]

It's a partition on the ( internal ) hard drive, 650MB in size. To cover hard drive failure, I have a second OS X installation on an external USB hard drive, where my system can boot from.

 

[Weaselboy]

Recovery mode/disk/partition, resided in the same internal hard disk of mac?
Or is it flash-based or something else?
I want to know in case of a hardware disk failure, if it will be possible to load the recovery mode.

There are two recovery modes. The first is the 650MB partition you see there on your hard drive. The second is called Internet recovery and is on newer Macs listed at this link. If a hard drive fails on one of those newer machines, you can install a new drive and the Mac can download the recovery utility over the internet to the new drive and reinstall the OS. However, this would be the OS that shipped from the factory.

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4904