Macintosh hd recovery. Create a Recovery HD partition manually. Recover all file formats and systems

• Tutorial

Background

In light of the release of OS X Mavericks, Golden Master decided to take a look at the new beast by installing it on an outdated iMac7.1. The installation was successful, in the usual way from a working system version 10.7. But everything worked very slowly. This mac has survived more than one OS generation update and not a single installation from “0”. Due to the lack of valuable data, it was decided to clean it up. I reformatted the partition from recovery mode, aka Recovery HD, and here an unpleasant surprise awaited me, and more than one. Details of how we managed to persuade the no longer kitty from Cupertino, without access to the Internet and a boot device

First surprise

During installation, Recovery HD was updated from version 10.7 to version 10.9, and hence the second surprise...

Second surprise

Internet Recovery is a well-known OSX recovery mechanism over the Internet. We log in to the Apple Store, if OSX is purchased, then the installer downloads the necessary files via the Internet. It works like a clock, or rather it worked. There is a small problem - Mavericks is not yet in the Apple Store, and the DMG file with the operating system was obtained from Dev Apple, so it was not possible to restore it in the usual way. " An unknown error has occurred"This is what greeted me when I tried to log in.
After scratching my head, I created a bootable USB flash drive. Here a third surprise awaited me...

Third surprise

The iMac refuses to see USB as a boot drive for some reason unknown to me. At the same time, Disk Utility, in Recovery mode, sees it normally. After resetting NVRAM, SMC and having had enough of playing with all the flash drives I found at home, I decided to try a portable drive. To put it mildly, see the result about flash drives. There was no DVD writer and, most importantly, 2-layer media at hand - I became depressed and crawled to Google.

The casket just opened

The result of 2 days of scouring specialized forums allowed me to install Mavericks without access to the Internet and without the ability to download from external media.
It’s simple, copy the Packages folder to the root of any flash drive with a capacity of more than 4 GB. To do this, you need an installation dmg file downloaded from Dev Apple (or obtained in another way).

You can get this folder like this:

Reboot into recovery mode (holding Alt), connect the flash drive and launch Terminal

We check the list of devices, we are interested in macHD- the label of my hard drive in iMac and usb-osx- label of the flash drive with the Packages directory in the root.
-bash-3.2# diskutil list /dev/disk0 #: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER 0: GUID_partition_scheme *250.1 GB disk0 1: EFI EFI 209.7 MB disk0s1 2: Apple_HFS macHD 249.2 GB disk0s2 3: Apple_Boot Recovery HD 650.0MB disk0s3 ... / dev/disk3 #: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER 0: GUID_partition_scheme *7.7 GB disk3 1: EFI EFI 209.7 MB disk3s1 2: Apple_HFS usb-osx 7.4 GB disk3s2

Let's look at where these devices are mounted (the paths are needed to form the installation command below)
-bash-3.2# mount | grep macHD /dev/disk0s2 on /Volumes/macHD (hfs, local, journaled) -bash-3.2# mount | grep usb-osx /dev/disk3s2 on /Volumes/usb-osx (hfs, local, nodev, nosuid, noowners)

We start the installation process.
-bash-3.2# installer -pkg /Volumes/usb-osx/Packages/OSInstall.mpkg -target /Volumes/macHD installer: Package name is OS X installer: Installing at base path /Volumes/macHD 2013-10-13 21: 36:12.016 installer Looking for system packages 2013-10-13 21:36:12.092 installer no system packages found 2013-10-13 21:36:12.093 installer No or Invalid system receipts found on /Volumes/macHD/Recovered Items 2013- 10-13 21:36:12.093 installer Attempting fallback using: /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/SystemMigration.framework/Resources/FallbackSystemFiles.plist 2013-10-13 21:36:12.423 installer Finding system files... 2013-10- 13 21:36:13.907 installer Writing system path cache. 2013-10-13 21:36:13.941 installer FSF cache NOT written: /Volumes/macHD/Recovered Items/System/Library/Caches/com.apple.FindSystemFiles.plist No mount point for /Volumes/Image Volume/.IABootFiles Cant determine mount point of /Volumes/Image Volume/.IABootFiles Could not statfs() Could not determine filesystem of installer: The install was successful.

Unfortunately, the installation process is uninformative (no progress is visible), you can indirectly monitor the change in free space on the macHD partition in the next terminal tab.
-bash-3.2# df -h | grep macHD /dev/disk0s2 232Gi 3.4Gi 229Gi 2% 881294 59958448 1% /Volumes/macHD ... /dev/disk0s2 232Gi 3.5Gi 229Gi 2% 911436 59928306 1% /Volumes/macHD

The installation takes approximately 1 hour and once completed takes up 7.3Gi of disk space.

After finishing, we reboot.
-bash-3.2# reboot
After the reboot, we will be greeted by a freshly installed OSX

Bonus

After experimenting a little, I found out an interesting side effect - in a similar way you can downgrade the operating system by replacing the contents of the Packages directory with earlier versions (10.7, 10.8)

Instead of a conclusion

I hope the article was useful, comments and obscene language are accepted. For myself, I received pleasant confirmation that under the “ruffles” of the nice OSX GUI, there is a very powerful command line. You just need to know how to cook it.

Disk Drill is a relatively new data recovery program developed for two platforms - Windows and Mac OS X. Like any other recovery program of this class, it covers a wide range of devices from which the user can perform recovery: computer and laptop, Windows and Mac, phone and tablet, HDD (SSD) drive or flash drive, etc.

The latest version of the recovery utility at the moment, Disk Drill 3.0, compatible with all operating systems starting from Mac OS X 10.8.5+. By the way, the recently released Sierra is fully supported. As for the Disk Drill for windows edition, all functions are identical to those of Makov. The latest release is called Disk Drill 2.0 for Windows, available for Windows XP and higher (Vista / 7 / 8 / 10).

Key Features of Disk Drill

We will look at the key features of the program that are equally relevant for all three versions of Disk Drill Pro / Basic, Disk Drill for Windows and Mac OS X.

Recover all file formats and systems

If the developers are not lying, then their Disk Drill program is capable of recovering files of more than 300 formats from the ashes. Including:

• photos in JPG, PNG or TIFF, pictures AI, PSD and INDD
• video files - AVI, DV and MP4
• music files (AIF, MP3 and WAV audio)
• RAW images – CR2, NEF or DNG
• documents in DOCX, PPTX and XLSX format (thus, the Disk Drill functionality allows you to recover damaged Word and Excel files).

As for file systems, Disk Drill can read and scan file systems of the following formats for remote data: HFS and HFS+, FAT/FAT32/exFAT, NTFS or EXT3/EXT4. Essentially, this suggests that you can attach any data recovery device to your PC or MacBook. In addition, if you use the Deep Scan option, volumes with a missing or damaged file system may also be able to detect something.

Available scan modes and recovery types

Quick SSD/HDD Scan

Disk drill's quick disk scan mode allows you to return files to your Mac along with their metadata, names and locations. If you recently deleted files, then this is perhaps one of the best recovery options before you formatted the HDD or overwrote a lot of files, which reduced the chances of correct file reconstruction.

SSD/HDD deep scan

Despite the fact that a deep scan of the HDD will take more time, this mode, built into the disk drill application, allows you to “dig out” what was not possible in other cases. The point is that some files may be damaged, and this requires a careful search for them in the file table. Say, if the system does not read the memory card at all, in Disk Drill you can understand whether it is possible to return the file table or not.

Return of protected data

For Mac computers, this is perhaps one of the best options if you installed Disk Drill before deleting important files, and the Vault and/or Guaranteed Recovery options (they are responsible for saving data on the disk) were already activated within the program.

Universal search and recovery of hard drive partitions

This function allows you to recover mac partitions formatted in HFS+ or NTFS. Fat32 file system support is also available. In all cases, Disk Drill works at a low level with disks as binary elements, quickly scans the disk and looks for signatures, known partition headers. This function is extremely necessary for recovering partitions on a Macbook Air / Pro hard drive or SDD.

HFS+ recovery

The Disk Drill application comes with 3 SSD recovery modules that were created specifically for HFS+ partitions:

• reconstruction of HFS+ directories
• search for deleted HFS+ partitions
• HFS+ extraction

Everything works very quickly, efficiently and brings Mac OS X back to normal.

Supports all storage devices and devices

You can connect a specific device and restore it in a few minutes. In addition to desktop solutions, Disk Drill successfully works with iOS (iphone recovery function available) and, of course, Android phones and tablets. By the way, we have already written about the wondershare dr fone program.

The free version of Disk Drill can scan virtual and hard drives - including Macintosh hard drives, external HDDs and SSDs, digital cameras, iPhones, iPads, iPods, Android phones, USB flash drives, Kindles and memory cards.

Disk Drill is great for beginners

Most likely, you will not have any questions as you use the disk drill application. Just click on the restore button - the program will do all the operations for you.

In fact, there is no need to spend hours exploring the functionality of the program; it has a built-in step-by-step wizard that will guide you through the necessary steps in a simple manner.

Additional programs for optimization as part of Disk Drill

The program package includes the so-called. an additional package of free disk tools (Extra Free Disk Tools Disk Drill), designed more for home users, but not for professional experts. You can optimize Mac OS X and reduce its size, find duplicate files on your hard drive, perform a backup, check the status of your SSDs and hard drives, and more.

What tools does the Disk Drill program offer as a significant bonus? These are several free optimization programs useful for comprehensively maintaining order on a computer or laptop:

1. Disk Health – checks SMART indicators, as well as disk monitoring. All this together will prevent disk failure.
2. Mac Cleanup and Duplicate Finder optimization program - analyzes the hard drive on Mac OS and searches for junk files on it, deleting which will only be beneficial and free up space on the SSD drive
3. Recovery Drive – creating a bootable USB flash drive for later recovery of Mac OS X using Disk Drill tools
4. Data Backup – creating a mirror (byte for byte) copy of a disk or partition on an SSD for data reconstruction

Summary. Thus, Disk Drill is another program for recovering files on SSD and HDD (see analogues), positioning itself as a universal solution for both Mac OS X and Windows. As already noted, there is a Pro version that works without restrictions, while the Basic edition allows you to recover up to 2 GB of files.

This note is intended primarily for owners MacBook Air with SSD drives. It is these users who are interested in removing everything unnecessary in order to free up disk space on their laptops as much as possible.

One of these candidates for deletion is the hidden section Recovery HD, which is created during installation OS X Lion. In principle, you can do without this section without particularly risking anything. Moreover, we already know how to create OS X Lion.

So, if you really need to get about 650 MB of additional disk space, then we do the following. Let's launch Terminal.app and enter the command:

In the resulting result we find the section identifier Recovery HD:

In my case (and most likely in yours), this is /dev/disk0s3 . And the previous section /dev/disk0s2 actually contains OS X Lion. We will also need his identifier.

Clearing the partition Recovery HD from all content:

sudo diskutil eraseVolume HFS+ Blank /dev/disk0s3

And then we merge the cleared partition with the partition OS X Lion. In other words, we merge /dev/disk0s3 with /dev/disk0s2:

sudo diskutil mergePartitions HFS+ "HD" /dev/disk0s2 /dev/disk0s3

Warning!

In this command the first section is with OS X Lion(/dev/disk0s2), and the second is the one we cleaned Recovery HD(/dev/disk0s3). If you swap them in this command, you will get a combined partition, but cleared of all data!

Excerpt from man diskutil on this matter:

Merge two or more partitions on a disk. All data on merged partitions other than the first will be lost.

Don't get confused! Be careful!

That's all. 🙂

It refused to boot. CMD+R Does not help. What should I do?

The start of the working day did not foretell anything bad. A cup of coffee, a good mood, the Power key and the MacBook displays the following sad picture:

A restless thought immediately flashed through my head about the safety of the data, the current version of the backup copy TimeMachine(which was not at hand) and possible loss of information.

Attempt No. 1. Booting into recovery mode

Being an interested user and an avid Mac user, I immediately tried to start the MacBook in recovery mode by holding down the keys CMD+R. Instead of the usual disk utility, the system greeted me with a window with an attempt network recovery.

Having chosen my home Wi-Fi network, I began to wait for further developments. After a few minutes, OS X's recovery progress was interrupted error -4403F.

Attempts to start the process again led to exactly the same result. Rebooting the router confirmed that everything was fine with the network connection.

Trying to diagnose the Mac, fix possible hard drive errors, or simply reinstall the system was now out of the question. Section with Recovery HD, in which the tools for restoration are stored, ordered to live long.

Attempt No. 2. Resetting PRAM and NVRAM

Mac computers were created by highly qualified engineers, so the correct organization of the entire system and the presence of “hidden hardware reserves” allows you to avoid a number of interruptions in its operation. One of these reserves is memory sections PRAM And NVRAM. It stores settings data that is not reset even after the computer is disconnected from power. To revive the fallen system, a decision was made reset PRAM and NVRAM settings.

1. Turn on the Mac.
2. After the white screen appears, quickly press the key combination CMD + Option + P + R.
3. Hold until the Mac reboots again and the Mac greets the sound.

PRAM and NVRAM reset completed.

Although they say that hope dies last, it, lifeless and barely alive, continued to lurk in my mind. Resetting PRAM and NVRAM did not affect the error when booting the system. The MacBook continued to test my nerves.

Attempt No. 3. Reset SMS

Having become accustomed to storing all the necessary data “in the cloud” or on removable media, the simplest solution to global problems has always been to reinstall the system “from scratch.” This case was special. I needed data stored in memory and I needed a working Mac today.

In the Mac environment there is something called system management controller SMC. The stability of the entire system depends on the reliability of its operation. Resetting SMC settings can cure a number of problems like:

– constantly high rotation speed of the cooler even at minimal load;
– freezes while the system is leaving Sleep mode;
– errors related to the operation of additional peripherals or external monitors, as well as correcting system boot problems.

To reset the SMC, follow these steps:

Laptops with built-in batteries

1. Turn off your MacBook and plug in the power adapter.
2. Press and hold the keys at the same time Shit + Control + Option + Power and hold until the MagSafe adapter indicator changes color.
3. Release all keys and press the key again Power.

Laptops with removable batteries (older models)

1. Turn off your MacBook and unplug the power adapter.
2. Remove the battery from the laptop.
3. Hold down the key Power And hold for at least 5 seconds.
4. Release Power, insert the battery and connect the power adapter. Turn on your laptop.

Desktops (iMac, Mac mini, Mac Pro)

1. Completely disconnect the computer from the mains power.
2. Wait at least 30 seconds.
3. Connect the power and wait another 5-10 seconds and then turn on the computer.

The above actions can become really effective and the system will start. In my case, a miracle did not happen.

Attempt No. 4. Recovery using a bootable USB flash drive

An attempt to revive the system using the above actions was unsuccessful. The only option left was to reinstall OS X using a bootable USB flash drive. For this step you will need:

• another computer running the OS X operating system;
• Flash drive with a size of at least 8 GB.

Preparing a flash drive

1. You will need to download the OS X Yosemite distribution from the Mac App Store.
2. To create a bootable USB flash drive, download the DiskMaker X utility (distributed for free). You will need it to deploy the distribution.
3. Format the flash drive using Disk Utility V Mac OS Extended (Journaled).

4. After the distribution has finished downloading, cancel the proposed installation and run the utility DiskMaker X.
5. Choose a system Yosemite (10.10). The utility will detect the distribution in the folder Applications. Click Use this copy(use this copy).

6. Select the drive installed in the USB port and agree to the warning about completely deleting all data present on the flash drive.

7. The process of mounting the distribution kit with OS X Yosemite to the drive will begin.

The copying process takes about 10-20 minutes and depends on the writing speed of the USB flash drive. During mounting, dialog boxes and folders may occasionally open on the screen. Do not pay attention.

Once the OS X Yosemite image has successfully deployed, remove the drive.

System installation
1. Insert the flash drive into the USB port of the “problem Mac”, press the key Power and hold down the key Alt.
2. In the list of available partitions for downloading, select OS X Base System. Please note that there is no section Recovery. .

3. The Mac will boot into recovery mode. After selecting the main system language, the installation menu will open. In the top menu you will find a standard list of utilities.

Use disk utility and first try to check the access rights to the system partition and correct any errors. If after rebooting the system still refuses to boot, you will need to separate a partition of at least 20 GB in size in order to install a new system. You will find detailed instructions on how to partition a disk.

From the same menu, you can either begin the process of installing the system on a newly created partition, or restore the system using a TimeMachine backup (see).

CAREFULLY! Be careful when choosing the installation partition. The installation must be carried out not on top of the old partition, but on a newly created one.

After the installation is complete, you will have access to all the data located on the “damaged” partition with the old version of the system.

Apple specialists have developed the most advanced system recovery mechanism, in which this function is practically not in demand - the iMac is well protected and runs smoothly. But even experienced users can experience glitches. There are several ways to restore your iMac.

If your iMac encounters an error, the Mac OS X Utilities menu will open automatically. You have the option to run it yourself. Before doing this, check that the Internet is working properly and that you can access the App Store. Restart your iMac and hold down the Command and R buttons at the same time. From the Mac OS X Utilities menu, open Disk Utility. Then open “First Aid” and “Fix Disk”. The program itself will find the problem and quickly fix it. If the application fails to detect and fix the error, you will have to reinstall the system completely. In the “Mac OS X Utilities” menu there is an option “Restore from a Time Machine backup”. This option allows you to recover all data from a specific date in the past. The system will prompt you to select the disk on which there is a saved copy. Do this and follow all subsequent prompts. A backup can only be transferred to the iMac from which it was created. If you want to install files on a new device, use the Migration Assistant. There is another way to restore your iMac. Go back to the Mac OS X Utilities panel. This time select “Reinstall Mac OS X”. The system will ask you to select the required disk. Most likely it will be the only option offered. You can clear it first or reinstall it and save the data. Make a choice. If you want to configure other programs, select “Customize” and follow the further prompts. You can restore your iMac to default settings. To do this, you will have to delete all information. Therefore, before this procedure, save the necessary data to an external drive. Go to the Mac OS X Utilities menu. Go to the “Disk Utility” section and open “Erase”. A new menu will appear. Open the “Mac OS Extended” option. Provide a name for the list and select “Erase.” After this procedure, in the “Disk Utility” tab, select “End Disk Utility”. Then, from the Mac OS X Utilities menu, open Reinstall Mac OS X. Follow all further prompts. After this procedure, you can copy all the data from the saved copy of Time Machine.

If your iMac is running Mac OS X Lion, you can reinstall it using the built-in recovery disc. It allows you to reinstall Mac OS X, restore your hard drive and data from a Time Machine copy. To launch the recovery disc, restart your iMac and press the Command and R buttons simultaneously. You can do the rest with the help of hints. You also have the option to create an external recovery drive. To do this, download the Lion Recovery Disk Assistant program. Insert a blank disc and run the program. Follow further prompts. Once you create a recovery disc, your partition will no longer appear in the Mac OS X Utilities menu. To restore, you need to insert the recovery disc, restart your iMac and press the “Option” button. In the boot manager, select “Recovery HD”. The system will tell you what to do next.

Now you know that restoring your iMac is very easy. You can read more information on system recovery in the “Mac OS X Utilities” menu in the “Online Help” section.