Looking for an alternative to making an emergency drive? Here’s another way to go: Make a clone of your startup drive. Earlier versions of Disk Utility can’t be used with a Fusion Drive.” Clone your startup drive When trouble strikes, you can boot from a ‘clone’ of your hard drive to make repairs. Also note that, if you have a new iMac with a Fusion Drive, Apple states that the “version of Disk Utility that comes with Fusion Drive is unique. You should either use the Recovery Disk Assistant method or wait for OS X 10.8.3. For starters, if you own the 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display or one of the newest iMacs, such models use a special version of OS X 10.8.2 not available from the Mac App Store. You may need to hold down the Option key when you choose Purchases to make the app show up. If it’s missing, redownload it from the App Store by selecting Apple menu > App Store. (Check in your Applications folder.) Even if you previously had this utility, it may no longer be on your drive, because OS X unhelpfully deletes it after you use it. Will work only with the Mac that made it. Luckily, you have another way to create an emergency flash drive.įirst, you need a copy of the Install OS X Mountain Lion app. In some cases, an Assistant-created drive The do-it-yourself method: Lacking the Recovery HD partition on your startup drive isn’t the only reason you might skip using Apple’s Recovery Disk Assistant. Connect your USB flash drive to your Mac, launch OS X Recovery Disk Assistant, select the drive, and then follow the on-screen prompts.

OS X Recovery Disk Assistant from Apple’s Support site. If the partition is missing or corrupt, you’ll see an error. Why do you have to have a partition on your Mac to be able to create the emergency drive on an external device? It’s probably because Disk Assistant requires the data on the partition to create the external drive. You can’t create an emergency flash drive using Apple’s Recovery Disk Assistant unless your Mac already includes a Recovery HD partition.

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