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

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I've tried to upgrade to Mountain Lion from Lion, but am told that the installation failed and that 'OS X can't be installed on the disk Macintosh HD, because a recovery system can't be created.' From what I've read online, this has something to do with my hard drive partitions.

If I were to create a bootable thumb drive with the ML installer file, would I be able to complete the installation or would the same problem occur? I'm more than happy to erase all my hard drive data and partitions if that's necessary and I would much rather a quick and easy method that erases all my data than a complicated method which keeps all my data intact.
 

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If I were to create a bootable thumb drive with the ML installer file, would I be able to complete the installation or would the same problem occur? I'm more than happy to erase all my hard drive data and partitions if that's necessary and I would much rather a quick and easy method that erases all my data than a complicated method which keeps all my data intact.

You should be able to create a bootable ML flash drive by using the "Lion Diskmaker" application which you can download from here. Note that you'll need at least an 8 GB flash drive.

Before doing any erasing of partitions and or the drive, make a Time Machine backup to an external drive. After installing ML, you can recover your data by restoring from Time Machine. After, boot to your Recovery partition (command + R) and use Disk Utility to remove partitions and erase the drive.
 
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You should be able to create a bootable ML flash drive by using the "Lion Diskmaker" application which you can download from here. Note that you'll need at least an 8 GB flash drive.

Before doing any erasing of partitions and or the drive, make a Time Machine backup to an external drive. After installing ML, you can recover your data by restoring from Time Machine. After, boot to your Recovery partition (command + R) and use Disk Utility to remove partitions and erase the drive.

Thanks - I just decided to erase all my partitions except for the Macintosh HD and the installation worked fine.
 

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