Yosemite Recovery Partition and Viewing Mac drive from Windows Bootcamp

[Mr.Bear]

This is my first posting on this forum and I am posting because I cannot seem to find correct, straightforward answers to the two things that have troubled me since installing Yosemite.

1). Recovery Partition and
2). Viewing my Mac drive from Windows / Bootcamp

My laptop is a MacBook Pro (Retina, Mid 2012), Intel Core i7 (2.7 GHz), 16GB Memory, and the hard drive is an Apple SSD SM768E (750 GB)


Recovery Partition
When major releases of OS X are officially released, I prefer to do a Clean Install (I create and use a USB installer to remove all partitions, format my drive and install the new OS X. Once everything is working, I then use Bootcamp Assistant to create a Windows 7 partition). This process has always worked extremely well and I have never had a single issue… that is until Yosemite.

Actually this time I did things slightly different because I was too busy to do what I described above so I just upgraded from 10.9.5 to 10.10… everything went very well but I noticed that after I was done, my Recover Partition was still showing it was at 10.9.5 - so I “downloaded” 10.10 and attempted to reinstall it. Everything went very well but my Recover Partition was still showing it was at 10.9.5

I later decided to do a Clean Install, everything went very well but once complete the only two partitions showing were Macintosh HD and Windows (no Recovery Partition whatsoever).

I figured it was an issue with 10.10 and assumed it would be resolved once 10.10.1 was released. I have performed a Clean Install with 10.10.1 and there is no change… meaning that the Recovery Partition that has ALWAYS BEEN CREATED AUTOMATICALLY WHEN DOING A CLEAN INSTALL is no longer created automatically with Yosemite.

I’ve read some postings that say it has to do with CoreStorage (which I still don’t know what it is or does) and/or has to do with FileVault. I think in my case, neither of these two things apply… I have never used or enabled FileVault and when viewing my hard drive after this last Clean Install, it shows File System: Journaled HFS+

The only two viable answers that come to mind is that Apple simply changed the way OS X works and they designed it not to create a Recovery Partition (not sure why they would do that though) or that there is a bug in Yosemite’s installation process.


View Mac drive from Windows / Bootcamp
The second thing that is troubling me with Yosemite is that when I am in Windows (Bootcamp) I can no longer see my Mac drive. Even though one cannot natively write to, save or delete things stored on a Mac drive from within Windows, I’ve always been able to “view” it… I need to also say that when I “upgraded” from 10.9.5 to Yosemite I could see my Mac drive from Windows just fine, but when I did a Clean Install with Yosemite, I cannot see my Mac drive at all from Windows.

 

[w1z]

Mr.Bear,

I ran into similar 'setup' issues with Yosemite's recovery partition and was able to create one by wiping out the old partition table, ie. using diskutil with format set to freespace or gdisk (open-source partitioning tool for gpt partitioning tables), creating a new single 'unencrypted' partition Mac OS X Extended Journaled and installing Yosemite from a USB installer.

As soon as the installation is over, open terminal and run 'diskutil list' - you should see a 650MB partition ie.

 3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB

To access this partition / use recovery, reboot your mac and click 'Command + R'

Only use filevault to enable encryption for your 'system' drive as it requires a working recovery partition to properly setup encryption.

Do note that the recovery partition is no longer accessible at normal boot using 'ALT' option key. I believe I was only able to view that partition whilst booting using the USB OSX installer.

Hope this helps.

 

[Mr.Bear]

Mr.Bear,

I ran into similar 'setup' issues with Yosemite's recovery partition and was able to create one by wiping out the old partition table, ie. using diskutil with format set to freespace or gdisk (open-source partitioning tool for gpt partitioning tables), creating a new single 'unencrypted' partition Mac OS X Extended Journaled and installing Yosemite from a USB installer.

As soon as the installation is over, open terminal and run 'diskutil list' - you should see a 650MB partition ie.

 3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB

To access this partition / use recovery, reboot your mac and click 'Command + R'

Only use filevault to enable encryption for your 'system' drive as it requires a working recovery partition to properly setup encryption.

Do note that the recovery partition is no longer accessible at normal boot using 'ALT' option key. I believe I was only able to view that partition whilst booting using the USB OSX installer.

Hope this helps.

I am unfamiliar with the 'diskutil list' command so I ran it and maybe I was mistaken as I see something named Recovery HD.

I will past the results of the command below... If I did a clean install and only other action was creating a Windows partition using Bootcamp Assistant, does all of this look correct (I do not recognize / understand most of this)?


/dev/disk0
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: GUID_partition_scheme *751.3 GB disk0
1: EFI EFI 209.7 MB disk0s1
2: Apple_CoreStorage 620.4 GB disk0s2
3: Apple_Boot Recovery HD 650.0 MB disk0s3
4: Microsoft Basic Data BOOTCAMP 130.0 GB disk0s4
/dev/disk1
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: Apple_HFS Macintosh HD *620.0 GB disk1
Logical Volume on disk0s2
3545782B-AC19-4268-A40E-8FB8743EE23E
Unencrypted

 

[w1z]

All your partitions appear to be in order so there's no need to do anything further

To boot into recovery, reboot your mac using 'Command + R'

As for viewing your mac drive from within Windows - I'm guessing you'll need to first unlock your mac drive prior to booting into Windows.. Perhaps someone else can chime in as I've never used bootcamp.

Cheers

 

[IA64]

I am not aware of OSX upgrading the recovery console in the past.

Once reason I think it's because when you want to reinstall the OS OTA, you restore the one shipped originally not the last installed one.

I don't also see a difference between both Recovery drives to be honest. .


As for HFS drives, download these drivers https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1368010/

 

[Mr.Bear]

All your partitions appear to be in order so there's no need to do anything further

To boot into recovery, reboot your mac using 'Command + R'

Cheers

Well that is good news eh?... Thank you!!!

I have alway been a decent power user going back to the DOS days and all the way through Windows 7. I purchased my first Mac a couple of years ago and have not taken the time to become a Mac power user, simply because it is not necessary (unlike Windows that requires a lot of knowledge of how things work behind the scenes) as Mac "just works"... I love my Mac

So that is a long way of saying I am embarrassed that I didn't know about that Terminal command you referenced but glad you did because according to what you saw, everything on my Mac is just the way it should be after doing my last Clean Install.

However I think there is one thing that is not working correctly or I am not understanding the process of the 'Command + R'... If I hold these two buttons down right after I hit the power button, I am eventually presented a screen titled 'OS X Utilities'. I do not see anything about Recovery

 

[w1z]

Anytime.

I do not see anything about Recovery

OS X Utilities reside in your 'Recovery HD' recovery system partition which is accessed using the combination provided above where 'R' is short for Recovery.

To learn more - http://support.apple.com/en-us/HT4718

 

[Ravenis]

Well that is good news eh?... Thank you!!!

I have alway been a decent power user going back to the DOS days and all the way through Windows 7. I purchased my first Mac a couple of years ago and have not taken the time to become a Mac power user, simply because it is not necessary (unlike Windows that requires a lot of knowledge of how things work behind the scenes) as Mac "just works"... I love my Mac

So that is a long way of saying I am embarrassed that I didn't know about that Terminal command you referenced but glad you did because according to what you saw, everything on my Mac is just the way it should be after doing my last Clean Install.

However I think there is one thing that is not working correctly or I am not understanding the process of the 'Command + R'... If I hold these two buttons down right after I hit the power button, I am eventually presented a screen titled 'OS X Utilities'. I do not see anything about Recovery

That is Recovery! If you don't see it while option booting check if File Vault is on-it is disabled by default with that on in the start up manager and you can access Recovery via Command R