Add a recovery partition on a triple boot drive?

[jamiethemorris]

I'm trying to add a recovery partition so I can use the Find My Mac feature. This would be simple if I had a single boot system, but I have Mavericks, Windows 8, and Arch Linux booting via UEFI on the same drive. Osx doesn't seem to like the partition map, so the ext4 partition is unmountable and labeled disk0s5, even though I have Paragon EXTFS installed. Is it possible/safe to add a HFS partition at the end of the disk (probably using gparted) and install the recovery partition to that? If not, is it possible to enable this feature without a recovery partition? I have attached a screenshot of my partition map.

[pokenguyen]

You don't need to edit your partition map before installing Recovery partition, it will automatically shrink selected partition, create a partition in that free space for you.

 

However, something happens since Mavericks. This is my drive:

   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *750.2 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Mavericks               179.4 GB   disk0s2
   3:         Microsoft Reserved                         134.2 MB   disk0s3
   4:       Microsoft Basic Data Windows 8               170.2 GB   disk0s4
   5:                  Apple_HFS DataOSX                 201.0 GB   disk0s5
   6:       Microsoft Basic Data DataWin                 198.5 GB   disk0s6

In Mountain Lion, I run RecoveryHDUpdater, select disk0s2 and it will create a recovery partition right after disk0s2, and enable Find My Mac feature. After clean install of Mavericks using Clover (I have 2-stage install), the recovery partition disappears, and when I choose disk0s2 in RecoveryHDUpdater, it raises errors:

Error (async): This partition map modification would make a Windows partition unbootable (-69728)

If I choose disk0s5, it creates RecoveryHD successfully, I can boot to it from Clover bootloader, but Find My Mac can't be activated because it doesn't detect the partition.

[pokenguyen]

I have finally created a working Recovery HD. It appears that my drive has too much partition for Boot camp, so OS X doesn't allow me to create Recovery HD. I installed Mavericks to a external hard drive, which contains Recovery HD after installing, then clone it to my internal hdd. You can use the guide here:

http://www.dmitry-dulepov.com/2011/09/how-to-create-mac-os-x-lion-recovery.html

I can enable Find My Mac after this, cheers!

[jamiethemorris]

I see that the guide mentions resizing a partition to make room, should I do that with gparted? Disk utility doesn't let me resize a partition unless it's the last partition afaik.

[pokenguyen]

I see that the guide mentions resizing a partition to make room, should I do that with gparted? Disk utility doesn't let me resize a partition unless it's the last partition afaik.

Yes, I resized Mac partition with gparted, and no errors happen.

[jamiethemorris]

I take it that's tricking the system into thinking the mounted DMG is the recovery partition?

[pokenguyen]

I take it that's tricking the system into thinking the mounted DMG is the recovery partition?

That dmg is the same with Recovery HD.

I can't run dmtest because my drive has too many partitions for Boot camp. You should try dmtest first, it's easier.

[jamiethemorris]

No, It creates Recovery HD. It's how Apple does it, so we do the same.

Ok, got it. It's going to create it at the end of my OS X partition right?

[pokenguyen]

Ok, got it. It's going to create it at the end of my OS X partition right?

Yes, it shrink your OS X partition and then create a recovery HD at the free space.

[jamiethemorris]

Thank you pojenguyen, that worked perfectly. I found dmtest in the lion recovery update.

[griftopia]

Folks, I really need these instructions but the URL is unreachable.

http://www.dmitry-dulepov.com/2011/09/how-to-create-mac-os-x-lion-recovery.html

 

Need to know exactly how to manually resize partition and which partition. dmtest trick gives me the following error saying partition map will render windows unbootable.

[0000-1248]

https://web.archive.org/web/20160313072527/http://www.dmitry-dulepov.com/2011/09/how-to-create-mac-os-x-lion-recovery.html