MP 1,1-5,1 Cloned SSD doesn't boot

[MauriceW]

I have a Mac Pro 5.1 (Mid 2010) which I have upgraded to run on the latest OS and Photoshop versions. Two years ago I install a metal graphics card (AMD Radeon HD 7950 3GB) and a 500 GB Western Digital SSD on which I installed OS Mojave. I have regularly update the OS and my apps and am now running on Monterey 12.6.7, but my SSD is running out of space. I have just cloned a new 2TB Western Digital SSD, firstly using Disk Utility. When that failed I tried Carbon Copy and then SuperDuper, which initially seemed to work, but I could only boot from the new drive if the old drive was connected.
I have now booted up in Recovery Mode and fresh installed Monterey and migrated my data filed from the old SSD, which now housed in a USB enclosure. I can boot from the new SSD provided that the old drive is connected via USB. Once booted I can disconnect the old SSD and the computer still functions as it should, but if I reboot without the old drive connected I just get a grey screen with a "No Entry" sign before it shuts down. The new 2TB SSD is set as the start-up drive in Preferences, but the boot sequence seems to be looking for the old SSD. Any ideas?

 

[flaubert]

Since you're running Monterey on a machine (the 5,1) that doesn't support Monterey natively, it appears that you're using some form of OpenCore, probably OCLP. OpenCore was probably installed on the EFI partition of your original disk, which is why you can only boot into Monterey when your original disk is present in the system (the way that OpenCore/OCLP overcome the unsupported hardware limitation is by having the machine boot first to OpenCore, which sets up some things in memory, and then OpenCore hands off to boot Monterey). I'm not very knowledgeable about the ins and outs of OCLP, so you should probably ask for help in the OCLP discord. You'll probably have to do some kind of re-install of OCLP on your new disk.

 

[MauriceW]

I use a GitHub legacy patcher when I installed the 500GB SSD and Mojave. During the process the EFI partition was edited. As this is a hidden file, maybe it wasn't copied over during the reinstall. I'll contact GitHub and see if the have an updated patcher for Monterey.
Thanks for you help.

 

[MauriceW]

Update: I downloaded Open Core Legacy Patcher v 0.6.6 from GitHub and used the Build and Install Opencore tool to prepare my SSD with Monterey pre-installed. I disconnected the old SSD and rebooted and it started up like a dream. I'm now one happy bunny.

 

[flaubert]

I'm glad you were able to work it out.

 

[Macschrauber]

Update: I downloaded Open Core Legacy Patcher v 0.6.6 from GitHub and used the Build and Install Opencore tool to prepare my SSD with Monterey pre-installed. I disconnected the old SSD and rebooted and it started up like a dream. I'm now one happy bunny.

you have not copied the needed Efi System Partition (ESP)

So there was no bootloader to help booting unsupported Monterey.

You should learn some more basics about how OpenCore works. Check the first post of this thread:

Manually Configured OpenCore on the Mac Pro