64 GB SATA 2.5-inch SSDNow V Series Solid State Drive installed but not recognized

[robby818]

I installed a Kingston SSD drive in my 2010 mac mini. If I put the OSX install DVD (grey disc 1), the SSD is not visible in either the installer or disk utility.

The SSD is a Kingston 64 GB SATA 2.5-inch SSDNow V Series Solid State Drive. Cheap drive.

The funny thing is that before i started all this I restored a SuperDuper image of 10.6.4 from my old mini to the SSD using a usb to SATA adapter. Installed and it worked! The SSD booted OS X but the ethernet jack was not working.


Does anyone know of a workaround for installing OSX onto a drive that is not being recognized in disk utility?

I'd like to find a way to reinstall OSX using the grey DVD without having to remove the SSD drive.

 

[mangrove]

Hey, you probably know more than I do about these things, but I did not notice your mention that you formatted the new SSD.

Maybe you're way past all that, but I just wanted to ask.

 

[Cave Man]

Yeah, it needs initialized. Boot from your OS X Installer DVD and after you choose your language, launch Disk Utility from the menu bar, initialize the drive (GUID partition map) and continue with the install.

 

[mangrove]

Hey caveman. I use to love reading computer stuff while sipping a hefe weitzen. Miss that over here.

 

[robby818]

Hey, you probably know more than I do about these things, but I did not notice your mention that you formatted the new SSD.

Maybe you're way past all that, but I just wanted to ask.

Thanks for the suggestion, but yeah I tried formatting it in disk utility and the SSD is not showing up at all. I can't even get to that first step of formatting the drive. It is completely missing.

Now I could probably remove the SSD, connect it via USB/sata adapter to another Mac and install OSX on it but I'd like to avoid having to remove it again, it was a pain.

UPDATE: I connected a FireWire drive to the 2010 mini, booted from the grey OSX install DVD that came with the mini and installed OSX to the firewire drive. I took the firewire drive and connected it to my Mac Pro and then used superduper to create an image of the firewire drive to an image file which was saved on my Mac Pro. I removed the ssd from the mini and connected it to my Mac Pro using a USB/sata cable. Finally, I restored the superduper image from my MacPro onto the SSD and put it back in the mini. Ethernet works now. Seems ok. Conclusion- the Kingston SSD drive is not recognized at all as a connected drive if i boot from an OSX installation dvd. Disk Utility will not see it at all. The only way to get OSX on it is to remove it from the mini. Not sure what the difference is..why is the drive working once an OS has been installed on it but it is not visible in disk utility if i boot off a cd.

 

[mangrove]

If a drive has data on it, I believe you need to go to Finder/Go/Utilities/Disk Utilities (or something with disk in its name-icon of hard drives). Then to format you must first click erase, then once that's finished you can format and sadly start the OSX install again.

If a clean install is not needed, then download Carbon Copy Cloner, and then use it to clone your original HDD. I just did that yesterday and it worked flawlessly after formatting the normal way, where your computer detects a drive without format. That's where you click Initialize.

Some here have mentioned that each iteration of a computer, like 2009 mini versus 2010 mini, the OSX that came from Apple with each mini, can be specific to that item as purchased. As some might say the mini 3,1 versus the mini 4,1. Maybe you already knew this.