Lion Partition erased by SD?

[Doug183]

1) Bought a new MacBook Pro & replacement SSD.
2) Updated all System software first on 5400k 320 gig internal drive.
3) Put SSD in external case.
4) Using Lion HD recovery utility, created 1 gig partition on SSD and 119 Gig partition.
5) Installed Lion Recovery Software on SSD.
6) Using Super Duper cloned internal HD to 119 gig partition on SSD
7) Swapped internal and external drives. 320 Gig HD now in external case.
8) Installed and updated a whole bunch of software on the new SSD.
9) Booted off all 4 partitions - Recovery on SSD Drive, Recovery on External, and the two other big partitions all booted properly.
10) Enabled Debug Mode in Disk Utility. I can see all partitions.

All is well. Everything works great. Except, Find my Mac doesn't work. Why? I screwed up and when I created the the recovery partition as Apple Partition Map. (why apple even allows this is a bit silly.) But no big deal, I had the 320 gig HD in the external case.

11) Only using Super Duper, I preformed an 'erase and copy" from of the 119 gig partition ("DougHD") on the internal SSD Drive to the external 320 Gig drive that had the correct.

12) HERE is the issue. The Lion Recovery partition is gone. (FYI, I even booted off this partition earlier.)

Any ideas about this? I assumed Super Duper only erases the data off the selected partition, and does not re-create partitions in order to erase. Am I correct on this? Any suggestions?

[dnanian]

We only erase the partition that you point us to. Why the recovery partition goes away is a mystery, but it can be recreated easily by reinstalling Lion (which will put a fresh OS under your existing files and apps).

[dnanian]

Doug - I've just tested this, and if you use Smart Update when restoring, the recovery partition seems to still be there. Did you try that?

[alirob]

I recently had a similar problem on my MBP 13". After installing Lion I did have the Recovery Partition. Following my SD backup,using Smart Update, the partition was gone. After reinstall of Lion it reappeared. I am hesitating to try another SD backup for fear of losing the partition again.
Rob

[dnanian]

I've tested this myself again a few weeks ago - with a straight-up Smart Update restore, the recovery partition was maintained as expected. I don't know why your recovery partition was removed - as I've said previously, we copy ONLY to the selected partition.

I wish I could reproduce the problem, but I haven't yet been able to.

Note, though, that there's no real "fear" involved in losing the partition: reinstalling Lion will bring it back if "lost"...