Our prior tutorials educated you on the ways to start up your Mac from a bootable media, pick a startup disk at boot time or after the fact, mount another Mac’s startup drive on your desktop in Target Disk Mode and boot your computer in Safe Mode or Verbose Mode.
For versions of OS X and macOS from Lion 10.7 and up, there’s a script called Recovery Partition Creator that will non-destructively put a recovery partition back on your Mac without you having. This article will help you create a Mac OS X or macOS recovery USB drive to use in case of disaster or no boot from internal hard drive. Every Mac running OS X Lion and later has a small (650MB) hidden recovery partition called Recovery HD located on your Mac’s internal hard drive which is. Newer Mac computers and some older Mac computers automatically try to start up from macOS Recovery over the Internet when unable to start up from the built-in recovery system. When that happens, you see a spinning globe instead of an Apple logo during startup.
macOS’ startup modes can be quite helpful for, among other things, troubleshooting complex issues that might require more than fixing disk permissions.
On the downside, the aforesaid startup modes aren’t very helpful if the startup disk has become corrupted or damaged.
Thankfully, macOS’ Recovery Mode provides the tools you need to solve these problems and is your last chance to repair the startup disk, reinstall macOS or restore from a backup after a fatal failure that prevents your Mac from starting up properly.
In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to enter Recovery Mode at boot time and use the built-in recovery tools to bring your Mac in perfect working condition.
What is Recovery Mode
How To Access Recovery Partition
Recovery Mode is a special mode that loads macOS’ built-in recovery tools from a special disk partition that holds a recovery image along with a copy of the macOS installer.
If your Mac cannot be recovered in any other way, use Recovery Mode to diagnose disk problems, get help online or install the version of macOS that previously ran on this Mac.
Use Recovery Mode to:
Tip: If the recovery partition itself is damaged and you cannot use Recovery Mode, enter Internet Recovery Mode by pressing Command (⌘) – Option (⌥) – R at boot time.
How to enter Recovery Mode
1) In the Apple menu choose Restart, or power on your Mac.
2) As your Mac restarts, hold down the Command (⌘) – R combination immediately upon hearing the startup chime. Hold the keys until the Apple logo appears.
Tip: If you own a Mac notebook, press the keys on its built-in keyboard as the keystroke might not register on external keyboards.
After a few minutes, the macOS Utilities window will appear.
If you see a login window or your own desktop, you didn’t press the keyboard combination early enough and have booted in regular macOS mode. Restart your Mac and try again.
Standard Recovery vs. Internet Recovery
Internet Recovery basically starts up your Mac directly from Apple’s servers and performs a quick test of its memory and hard drive to check for hardware issues. If the boot sector is missing on the startup volume, or the recovery partition itself has become damaged or corrupted, your Mac will automatically enter Internet Recovery Mode.
To enter Internet Recovery manually, restart or power on your Mac and hold down the Command (⌘) – Option (⌥) – R after hearing the startup chime. Release the keys after the animated globe appears on the screen.
“Starting Internet Recovery,” reads a message. ”This may take a while.”
You will be asked to connect to a wireless network unless your Mac is already connect to the Internet via Ethernet. Internet Recovery requires a network connection because it needs to go online and download a recovery system image from Apple’s servers.
After the recovery image has been successfully downloaded, Internet Recovery will start up your Mac from it and present you with the same options as standard Recovery Mode, with one crucial difference: choosing to reinstall macOS in Internet Recovery Mode will download a version of macOS from Apple’s server that was factory-preloaded on your computer at the time of purchase, not the latest version you updated to through the Mac App Store.
Reinstalling macOS in standard Recovery Mode, on the other hand, will install a version of macOS that was last installed on this Mac. Standard Recovery Mode gets the macOS Installer image file from a local recovery partition on your Mac.
RELATED:Things to know about OS X Internet Recovery Mode
Other options in Internet Recovery are the same as in standard Recovery Mode: you can use Disk Utility to fix errors on any connected drive, get help online in Safari and restore your Mac from a Time Machine backup.
Internet Recovery is supported on newer Macs with OS X Lion or later.
Related tutorials
Check out these resources that cover a myriad of ways you can start up your Mac:
For even more how-tos, browse our complete archive of Mac tutorials.
Need help? Ask iDB!
Not sure how to do certain things on your Apple device? Let us know at [email protected] and our future tutorials might cover your specific problem and provide a solution.
macOS Recovery is part of the built-in recovery system of your Mac. You can start up from macOS Recovery and use its utilities to recover from certain software issues or take other actions on your Mac.
How to use macOS Recovery
Turn on your Mac and immediately press and hold Command (⌘)-R or one of the other macOS Recovery key combinations on your keyboard. Continue holding until you see the Apple logo or a spinning globe. Startup is complete when you see the utilities window:
After starting up from macOS Recovery, select from these utilities, then click Continue:
Restore From Time Machine Backup: Restore your Mac from a Time Machine backup of your Mac.
Reinstall macOS (or Reinstall OS X): Download and reinstall the Mac operating system.
Imac Boot Into Recovery Partition
The Reinstall macOS utility installs different versions of macOS depending on the key combination you used while starting up. Learn how to reinstall macOS.
Get Help Online: Use Safari to browse the web and find help for your Mac. Links to Apple's support website are included. Browser plug-ins and extensions are disabled.
Disk Utility: Use Disk Utility to repair or erase your startup disk or other hard disk.
These additional utilities are available from the Utilities menu in the menu bar:
Firmware Password Utility or Startup Security Utility
Terminal
Apple Boot To Recovery Partition Windows 10
To quit macOS Recovery, choose Restart or Shut Down from the Apple () menu. If you want to choose a different startup disk before quitting, choose Startup Disk from the Apple menu.
If you can't start up from macOS Recovery
Newer Mac computers and some older Mac computers automatically try to start up from macOS Recovery over the Internet when unable to start up from the built-in recovery system. When that happens, you see a spinning globe instead of an Apple logo during startup. To manually start up from macOS Recovery over the Internet, press and hold Option-Command-R or Shift-Option-Command-R at startup. Learn more about these key combinations.
If you still can't start up from macOS Recovery, you might need to reinstall macOS after starting up from another disk or volume, or by using a bootable installer.
Boot Into Recovery Partition Dell
macOS Recovery over the Internet, the Reinstall macOS utility, and the Get Help Online utility all require an Internet connection. If you need to connect to a Wi-Fi network, move your pointer to the top of the screen, then choose a network from the Wi-Fi menu in the menu bar.