So High Sierra appears to have retained the older HFS+ partition for its Recovery System. Although installing High Sierra onto an SSD resulted in its format being converted to APFS, this wasn’t supported for Fusion Drives or hard disks (at first). In macOS 10.13 High Sierra, which introduced APFS, Apple had a problem.
#RECOVERY PARTITION MAC OS X MAC OS X#
So versions of Mac OS X from 10.7 Lion to 10.12 Sierra had Recovery Partitions in HFS+ format. Unfortunately not all of Apple’s documentation follows that convention, and as a result can confuse further. For this reason, I prefer not to refer to APFS partitions as partitions, but containers. This gives rise to endless confusion, as an HFS+ volume is also a disk partition, while an APFS volume is inside a container, and it’s the container which is the disk partition. APFS adds another layer into its structure: its partitions are properly known as containers, within which each APFS volume is stored. HFS+ volumes are each separate partitions of the disk, which are physically separate areas of storage. Each disk is formatted into different partitions, using a GUID Partition Table, which gives its name to the standard top-level format of the disk, GPT. When Apple added Recovery Mode, it was kept on a hidden HFS+ volume.Īt this point, I need to make clear how Mac disks are structured, and how the terminology is confusing. I suppose its nearest equivalent was single-user mode (SUM), which for many was the preferred way of running fsck to check and repair your startup disk, and didn’t we need to then. Until July 2011, with the release of Mac OS X 10.7 Lion, Macs didn’t have any Recovery Mode. Except that it doesn’t, and hasn’t for the last three years, since Mojave, unless it’s an M1 Mac running Big Sur, and even that might change shortly. I offer my insight into simplifying those instructions in this March 2021 article.Every Mac user knows that when you start your Mac up in Recovery Mode, it boots from its Recovery Partition. Warning: Always ensure you have a complete Time Machine backup, clone, or other copy, and you can then pursue Apple’s revive and restore instructions, which requires a second Mac and particular cable.Īpple provides detailed instructions for reviving or restoring Intel Macs and M1-based Macs. In some cases, if you encounter a problem that prevents macOS reinstallation, it could be a more serious issue. A Recovery partition will be added if missing or updated if out of date. Reinstalling is always a “non-destructive” installation: no drives or partitions are erased. Apple long ago stopped offering an option to erase and install. The easiest next step is to reinstall macOS. If you don’t have a Recovery partition or you can’t restart as above, proceed to reinstall, revive, or restore.
Eventually, one or more drive icons will appear along with the Options icon. Hold down the power button until “Loading startup options” appears, which can take about 10 seconds.
Apple discontinued showing Recovery partitions with APFS startup volumes. The boot process shows available startup volumes as well as each Recovery partition with its macOS version.