Can't install Yosemite or restore from Time Machine

[mastercraft813]

I am trying to install Yosemite on my Early 2011 Macbook Pro (i7, 8GB RAM). I have two internal drives, I have a 1TB Fusion HDD and a 250GB SSD. I am attempting to install Yosemite onto the SSD. I've had Yosemite installed on the SSD before and had the HDD running before, so I'm certain that this is unrelated to the physical installation of the SSD which was about a year or so ago.

I've tried several times to wipe the SSD and install Yosemite on it (the HDD is empty too). The drive is formatted correctly for installing Yosemite. Each time it has downloaded Yosemite, installed it, and when it restarts I get the circle with the line thru it screen. I've verified and repaired each disk several times.

I've also tried restoring from a Time Machine backup and I get the same circle with the line thru it. I've restored from this Time Machine before so I'm pretty sure the backup is not the issue.

The problem appears to be with the Yosemite installation. I've tried every trick that I can find online and I'm at a loss for what to do. I can't install an OS, so I can't do anything at all.

The SSD is a Crucial BX100. Do I need to do something to the drive before it can have Yosemite installed on it? How would I go about doing that with no OS installed on either drive?

Thank you in advance for your help.

 

[Sun Baked]

The OS should be installed, but something is broken.

Try booting in safe mode.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201262

while in safe mode repair permissions -- see if that works

try installing the updates while in safe mode -- if the permission repair doesn't work

Those are the easy ones, somebody else may have some more ideas to fix the install.

NOTE: safe mode is really really really slow, so give it awhile while it boots.

 

[CoastalOR]

I am trying to install Yosemite on my Early 2011 Macbook Pro (i7, 8GB RAM). I have two internal drives, I have a 1TB Fusion HDD and a 250GB SSD. I am attempting to install Yosemite onto the SSD. I've had Yosemite installed on the SSD before and had the HDD running before, so I'm certain that this is unrelated to the physical installation of the SSD which was about a year or so ago.

I've tried several times to wipe the SSD and install Yosemite on it (the HDD is empty too). The drive is formatted correctly for installing Yosemite. Each time it has downloaded Yosemite, installed it, and when it restarts I get the circle with the line thru it screen. I've verified and repaired each disk several times.

I've also tried restoring from a Time Machine backup and I get the same circle with the line thru it. I've restored from this Time Machine before so I'm pretty sure the backup is not the issue.

The problem appears to be with the Yosemite installation. I've tried every trick that I can find online and I'm at a loss for what to do. I can't install an OS, so I can't do anything at all.

The SSD is a Crucial BX100. Do I need to do something to the drive before it can have Yosemite installed on it? How would I go about doing that with no OS installed on either drive?
Thank you in advance for your help.

1TB Fusion HDD, is it fused with the SSD? Is this a new installation of the SSD or did it work with a previous OS installation? Is the HDD in the optical drive bay and the SSD in the internal drive bay? What OS did you have before trying to install Yosemite? Have you ever successfully used Yosemite?

Did you have TRIM enabled on your SSD with Chameleon or Trim Enabler? They effect the kext signing which is a problem for Yosemite. Here is information about the symptom, problem, and how to recover:
https://www.cindori.org/trim-enabler-and-yosemite/
We had a poster that used Chameleon to enable trim and even though they disabled trim with Chameleon there was still problems on a future install of Yosemite. I would have thought since you wiped (erased?) the SSD and did a full Yosemite install that would have eliminated the old modified kext if you had used an app to enable trim.

Have you thought about making a bootable USB flash drive installer of the full Yosemite install app so you don't have to keep downloading it? Let us know if you need information about making an installer.

 

[mastercraft813]

1TB Fusion HDD, is it fused with the SSD? Is this a new installation of the SSD or did it work with a previous OS installation? Is the HDD in the optical drive bay and the SSD in the internal drive bay? What OS did you have before trying to install Yosemite? Have you ever successfully used Yosemite?

Did you have TRIM enabled on your SSD with Chameleon or Trim Enabler? They effect the kext signing which is a problem for Yosemite. Here is information about the symptom, problem, and how to recover:
https://www.cindori.org/trim-enabler-and-yosemite/
We had a poster that used Chameleon to enable trim and even though they disabled trim with Chameleon there was still problems on a future install of Yosemite. I would have thought since you wiped (erased?) the SSD and did a full Yosemite install that would have eliminated the old modified kext if you had used an app to enable trim.

Have you thought about making a bootable USB flash drive installer of the full Yosemite install app so you don't have to keep downloading it? Let us know if you need information about making an installer.

HDD is not fused with the SSD. Not a new installation, it was working previously. HDD is in optical bay, SSD is in internal drive bay. I was previously running 10.10.5. I did not have TRIM enabled. I was using a Yosemite bootable installer that I created when Yosemite came out so it was installing 10.10.1. I had stopped using it because I thought that the installer was possibly corrupt and contributing to my problems. The installer is on an old HDD so I didn't trust that it was working properly.

I ended up getting everything to work but I'm not sure why this method ended up working.
1. Wiped SSD and HDD
2. Installed Yosemite on HDD via external installer drive
3. Booted to HDD
4. Installed Yosemite on SSD
5. Wiped HDD
6. Restored a Time Machine backup to SSD.

Thank you for your help. Any ideas why this method worked?

 

[CoastalOR]

I'm glad you got it sorted out!
I'm not sure why your method worked. You should have been able to install directly to the SSD. I successfully used a bootable USB flash drive with the full Yosemite installer to install Yosemite directly to my new SSD I installed 2011 MBP. Then I used Migration Assistant from a clone on an external drive to restore my files.
On step 4; how did you install Yosemite on SSD?

 

[mastercraft813]

On step 4; how did you install Yosemite on SSD?

After I installed Yosemite on the HDD, I booted to the HDD. The external installer drive was still plugged in so I ran the Yosemite installer and installed it on the SSD.