Apple_Boot “Boot OS X” partition and Fusion Drive

Well, I was able to "solve" this in a round-about way.

I used the recovery disk assistant with my MacBook Air to make a recovery SD card. With that plugged into my mini, I was able to successfully boot into it and the disk utility there was able to comprehend my fusion drive.

That done, I then checked and saw that the recovery partition on the SD card was the same size as the recovery partition that wasn't working right, so I did a dd from the SD card overwriting the recovery partition.

The result: my option menu now offers the choice of the fusion drive (booting normally) or the recovery partition, and both work.

What I think may have been going on is that core storage seems to want to turn the recovery partition into a 'boot helper' on encrypted volumes. Perhaps it was trying to do the same thing on this machine, despite the fact that there was a separate boot partition intended to serve that purpose.

I'm not going to mark this as "solved," however, because I think there has to have been a better way.

OS X Internet Recovery
Mac models introduced after public availability of OS X Lion include the ability to start up directly from an Internet-based version of the OS X Recovery system. OS X automatically uses this feature when the Recovery System on the hard disk isn't available (such as when your hard disk encounters an issue, or when your hard disk has been replaced or erased).

My setup is a Mac mini 2011 with a DIY Fusion drive (840 Pro + 1 TB Hitachi). The Fusion drive was built on 10.8 and then the machine was upgraded to 10.9.

diskutil list 
/dev/disk0
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *256.1 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:          Apple_CoreStorage                         255.7 GB   disk0s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Boot OS X               134.2 MB   disk0s3
/dev/disk1
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *1.0 TB     disk1
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk1s1
   2:          Apple_CoreStorage                         934.5 GB   disk1s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Boot OS X               650.0 MB   disk1s3
   4:       Microsoft Basic Data BOOTCAMP                64.9 GB    disk1s4
/dev/disk2
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:                  Apple_HFS Fusion HD              *1.2 TB     disk2

1. When I press alt, I get three entries, Fusion, Fusion, Boot Camp. Either Fusion being selected boots the main OS. Bootcamp boots Windows.

2. ⌘R boots local Recovery HD (not Internet Recovery). I have a choice of Wi-Fi, if I need Internet Recovery.

In your case, is it possible the Recovery HD is damaged?