MacOS – How to shorten startup time after Lion to Mountain Lion upgrade

From what I've been able to gather, this issue occurred because of the existence of partition 4. A default install of OS X, as of Lion, involves three partitions: EFI, your OS X boot volume, and the recover partition.

Features such as Recovery Mode and FileVault require original partitioning schemes in many cases - especially when FileVault is already in use on a partition, as it the partition scheme has been converted to a CoreStorage group. This makes things much messier to try installing without an original layout.

This seems to be the most likely cause of your error. Since I have no logs, dumps, or other material to go by, I can only speculate and apply my knowledge and experience to the matter. However, seeing as OS X installed just fine to the 4th partition, which was blank, it seems to me that the partition scheme itself was to blame, as I stated above. Sorry about the inconvenience.

Good luck and happy upgrading!

Since you've never purchased it from the App Store, you cannot re-download iPhoto from the App Store (unless you buy it again).

The only way you get re-download rights to iLife on the App Store is if you either purchased it from the App Store or bought a Mac that does not come with a software re-install disc.