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Advice on restoring an SSD Boot Drive.

choreo

choreo

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jan 10, 2008
910
358
Midland, TX
Yesterday I had my internal SSD Boot Drive die...
(https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1818064/).

So, after working the past 24 hours, I now have the Mac back up and running from a standard Internal Hard Drive in Bay #2 with the latest version of Mavericks installed. All of my apps, etc have been restored from my most recent Time Machine backup (thank God for TM when it works!).

I had to completely remove the dead Samsung 840 EVO 500GB 2.5" SATA-3 SSD and Apricorn Velocity Solo X2 PCI card in order to get the MacPro to even start-up as I kept getting a "circle with a line through it" on-screen with each reboot attempt until it was extracted (may not have had to remove the PCI card?).

So here is my question(s)...

I have a new Samsung 840 EVO SSD arriving in the morning. I am initially making the optimistic assumption that the PCI card is OK and just the drive died.

(1) What is the best way to transfer ALL the system, apps, data on the temporary boot drive I have now running in Bay #2 to the new SSD Drive (assuming it mounts). Would CCC be an acceptable method to clone everything or do I need to boot from a Mavericks Installer USB thumb drive and do another system install/TM restore routine to the SSD?

(2) Another option might be to install Yosemite on the new SSD from a USB thumb drive installer as upgrading will probably be inevitable, but not convinced it is really ready for prime time. I also see there are Trim issues with SSD and Yosemite, etc. right now. But just out of curiosity, if I were to install Yosemite on the SSD boot drive, would I be able to perform a Time Machine Restore of all my apps, etc from a backup made under Mavericks??? Sounds scary!
 
The simplest and probably the fastest way for you is the Clone feature of TechTool since you already have that. I've found it to be a very capable and reliable tool.
 
Did you plug the old 840 evo into the optical bay and test if it actually works? May be your PCIe card failed but not the SSD itself.
 
Plug it into an empty sled bay directly into the sata plug it should stay in fine even when you have it vertical though if you are worried just use a bit of tape to stick to the casing where the sled goes to keep it level.

I use a bootable OS X usb and if the 840 is bricked you will find out. If so do the restore in the sled with system migration assistant, have the x2 empty and then after fit it back in.
 
choreo said:
Did not think of that. Guess I would need some sort of cable?
Click to expand...

The cable in the optical bay is regular SATA with two connectors on one cable for two optical disk devices. If you only have one optical device up there, then you just hook your SSD to the free SATA connector, no extra cable needed.

Just be careful sliding the optical cage out as the cable is rather short. I had to slide partially out, reach in and disconnect, then slide the cage all the way out when I pulled a DVD drive.
 
As the others suggest, no extra cable required. And that's the SATA port which works with the 840 evo natively. Even though it will throttle your 840 evo to SATA 2 speed limit. However, it's the best way to know if the SSD still working properly, or it's the PCIe card's problem.

Of course, you can also plug the 840 evo into any HDD bay as well.
 
TruckdriverSean said:
The cable in the optical bay is regular SATA with two connectors on one cable for two optical disk devices. If you only have one optical device up there, then you just hook your SSD to the free SATA connector, no extra cable needed.
Click to expand...
I don't think that the OP mentioned which model Mac Pro is involved but the optical drives are only SATA in 4,1 & 5,1. 3,1 & earlier they are PATA & won't work with a SATA3 SSD.
 
Plugged it in to the Lower Optical Bay directly and restarted. According to the System Info Screen Shot attached (together with the fact that nothing showed up on the desktop or in Disk Utility), I am guessing the drive is fried.

The new SSD just arrived so I will be trying that next.

DeadSSD.jpg
 
choreo said:
Plugged it in to the Lower Optical Bay directly and restarted. According to the System Info Screen Shot attached (together with the fact that nothing showed up on the desktop or in Disk Utility), I am guessing the drive is fried.

The new SSD just arrived so I will be trying that next.

Image
Click to expand...

Likely the controller chip or connector broke/bad solder joint - I get the device ID show up normally just like with spinning disks doing data recovery if it's the flash itself. I have revived the odd controller chip with a heat gun before on both types of drive to get data off when out of warranty before but if you have a backup its RMA to Samsung time.
 
Gav Mack said:
Likely the controller chip or connector broke/bad solder joint - I get the device ID show up normally just like with spinning disks doing data recovery if it's the flash itself. I have revived the odd controller chip with a heat gun before on both types of drive to get data off when out of warranty before but if you have a backup its RMA to Samsung time.
Click to expand...

Yup - RMA time.

After verifying that the first SSD was dead, I pulled it out of the lower optical bay and plugged in the new 840 EVO that I received today, restarted and it showed right up everywhere...

NewSSD.jpg


While I had the new SSD still in the lower optical bay, I went ahead and ran the new Samsung Restoration Updater on it from my upper CD/DVD Drive - seemed to go without a hitch (we will see). Took maybe 10 minutes to update the firmware and perform the restoration

I then restarted and double-checked the info (I guess the Firmware update succeeded?)...

NewSSDUpdated.jpg


All still looked good, so I removed the new SSD from of the lower optical bay and reinstalled it on to the Apricorn PCI card - installed the PCI card in the Mac and restarted.

So far, so good. Just reformatted the SSD with Disk Utility and am performing the clone operation from my temporary boot drive now - seem to be progressing fine (so far).
 
Last edited:
Wipe, fresh install, manually replace data

I would start with fresh software. I would wipe the drive, reformat it, then do a fresh install of Yosemite or Mavericks, whichever you prefer. Furthermore, I would avoid using old potentially corrupt data -- specifically your user library and system folders.

If I were you, after installing the OS, I would manually drag-and-drop your data over form your TM backup and install your apps fresh from the App store or wherever you received them. IF you have to pull the apps from the backup, I'd manually do that as well (remembering to pull over the App Support files and all relevant plist files, especially if any of the software required a product key, i.e. Office).

Fresh software is always the best solution, especially when we're talking about corrupt or failing drives (HDD or SDD) since data may have been moved or misplaced while it was attempting to repair the disk or boot from bad loaders.

Just my opinion, hope you're up and running!
 
Thanks to everyone's advice on this thread. I seem to be back up and running thanks to your help!

I recall it did not seem like that much of a speed boost when I installed my first SSD boot drive a year ago, but after a couple days of working off a regular hard drive, I really noticed how slow things got.

Feel like I have a new computer!:)
 
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