Booting a 2011 Mini with an 10.15 SSD external

[Abacab]

I just upgraded an SSD in my 2012 MBP which is running Catalina.
I have a 2011 Mini running High Sierra on the original 5300rpm HD
My intention is to replace the internal SATA with the SSD taken from the MBP. There is no data to migrate. Any tips on getting this to work with out a new installation?

 

[CoastalOR]

Are you aware that the maximum Apple supported macOS for the 2011 Mini is High Sierra (10.13)? I don't see just installing the SSD in the Mini will work with Catalina (10.15) without changing the OS to something between 10.7 to 10.13.

There is a thread for using Catalina on unsupported Macs, but it takes some effort:

macOS 10.15 Catalina on Unsupported Macs

I use the Driver####, DriverOrder nvram variables for the APFS driver - it behaves a lot like the ROM patch in that it gets loaded before Startup Manager (hold option key at boot) - whereas the APFS software patch loads an EFI Shell and starts the APFS.efi driver with a startup.nsh script...

forums.macrumors.com

 

[Abacab]

Are you aware that the maximum Apple supported macOS for the 2011 Mini is High Sierra (10.13)? I don't see just installing the SSD in the Mini will work with Catalina (10.15) without changing the OS to something between 10.7 to 10.13.

 

[Abacab]

High Sierra is installed on the Mini.

 

[CoastalOR]

High Sierra is installed on the Mini.

But you said the SSD you want to install has Catalina, it will not work to boot the Mini with Catalina or did I misunderstand?

 

[EmmEff]

You’ll need both drives connected to the Mini. Clone the Mini’s HD to the SSD, remove the HD and replace with the SSD and it should be good to go. I did exactly this with my 2012 Mini a couple of years ago (cloned the internal slow HD to a USB connected SSD and swapped them)

 

[CoastalOR]

You’ll need both drives connected to the Mini. Clone the Mini’s HD to the SSD, remove the HD and replace with the SSD and it should be good to go. I did exactly this with my 2012 Mini a couple of years ago (cloned the internal slow HD to a USB connected SSD and swapped them)

The OP would need to COMPLETELY erase the SSD before cloning the internal Mini HDD to the SSD because of double Volumes created when Catalina was installed.

About the read-only system volume in macOS Catalina or later - Apple Support (IN)

macOS Catalina or later runs in a read-only system volume, separate from other files on your Mac. When you upgrade to macOS Catalina or later, a second volume is created, and some files may move to a Relocated Items folder.

support.apple.com

 

[EmmEff]

No argument here... you’re correct.

 

[ignatius345]

You’ll need both drives connected to the Mini. Clone the Mini’s HD to the SSD, remove the HD and replace with the SSD and it should be good to go. I did exactly this with my 2012 Mini a couple of years ago (cloned the internal slow HD to a USB connected SSD and swapped them)

I did exactly this recently with an iMac recently using Carbon Copy Cloner -- worked perfectly. I booted off the clone over USB for a while just to make sure all was good before I did the swap.

One thing to bear in mind with a Mini that old is that I'm pretty sure it only has USB 2.0, so that clone is gonna take a while.

 

[Abacab]

First I want to THANK everyone for their input.
If I erase the SSD I am erasing THE VOLUME so the Catalina OS will still be intact? I went through this with Mojave on a MBP and wanted to avoid having to download the Patch from Dos-dude. I may just put Linux on this Mini and use as a Media server.