03-29-2014, 01:44 AM

I went install Mavericks on my iMac (upgrade from Mac OS 10.7.5) and it failed with the following error:

"OS X can't be installed on the disk Macintosh HD because a recovery system can't be created."

Any suggestions as to why this has happened and how to fix? Hope I don't have to redownload the whole thing again...

03-29-2014, 02:25 AM

Not knowing any other info about your Mac does it have enough free space on the hard drive.

03-29-2014, 03:03 AM

See the following thread in the MacRumors Forum: LINK

03-29-2014, 04:12 AM

Thanks. The error message in that thread is precisely the error that I am getting.

I have followed the instructions here:

Deleting the Mac OS X 10.7 Lion “Recovery HD” Partition

After opening Terminal and running this command:

diskutil eraseVolume HFS+ Blank /dev/disk0s3

"diskutil list" returns the following:

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: GUID_partition_scheme *251.0 GB disk0
1: EFI 209.7 MB disk0s1
2: Microsoft Basic Data Macintosh HD 125.0 GB disk0s2
3: Apple_HFS Blank 650.0 MB disk0s3
4: Microsoft Basic Data WIN7 125.1 GB disk0s4

Which command do I run to merge disk0s3 with disk0s2?

I tried "diskutil mergePartitions HFS+ Macintosh HD disk0s2 disk0s3", but it didn't work.

03-30-2014, 05:43 AM

After deleting the recovery partition, I can no longer boot into Mac OS. When I hold down the Option button while booting, there is no longer an option to boot into Mac OS - only Windows. When I boot into Windows, I can see my Mac OS partition and the deleted blank partition in explorer. How do I recover from here?

03-30-2014, 04:44 PM

Think you have killed the OS X installation. Trust you had burnt to a USB thumb drive prior to running the Installer, or you have a backup on an external hard drive?