Help - Macbook Pro SSD Crucial MX300 won't boot

[nazza99]

Hi, would really appreciate any advice people have here - I'm not techie at all and struggling with booting a recently purchased Crucial SSD drive for Macbook Pro early 2011 either internally or externally via USB.
I am now being advised by Crucial support live chat that the 'booting information was corrupted while cloning' and that the only workaround is to do a secure erase of the SSD and install fresh operating system on it.

http://forum.crucial.com/t5/Solid-State-Drives-SSD-Knowledge/SSDs-and-Secure-Erase/ta-p/112580

Steps taken so far...
- Connected SSD via USB 2.0 enclosure and Initialized the SSD via Disk Utility. Chose Mac OS Extended (Journaled), GUID Partition Table
- Used SuperDuper to clone entire mac drive to the SSD - Copy completed successfully
- Swapped the drives over placing SSD internally and mac drive in USB, then tried to reboot holding down Option key
- Selected Crucial drive - apple logo & progress bar appear but it hangs just over half way through. Left running overnight and same position
- Went into Startup Disk and selected Crucial drive as start up disk
- Rebooted - still hangs on apple logo
- Swapped drives back over again to see if SSD would boot via USB (to rule out any issue with sata cable) and reboot still hangs on apple logo when selecting Crucial SSD

So, I'm at a loss as to what the issue is (faulty SSD?). I'm reluctant to do fresh operating system install as I have a lot of files / apps which I wanted to clone automatically and really wanted my system as-is without the extra effort of migrating everything.

Any advice would be hugely appreciated. Thanks, Natalie

 

[nazza99]

UPDATE: after some perseverance I have managed to resolve the issue so thought I would share what I did in case it helps anyone else facing the same issue. No idea if this is the "right" way to do it but my mac is now running like a dream with about 15 sec boot up time and really quick working with multiple apps.

I erased the SSD again (whilst in USB enclosure and the mac HDD back in the mac book) using Disk Utility and re-booted into Recovery Mode (Command + R).
I then installed OS X selecting the Crucial SSD to install it to. This took a couple of hours.
Once complete, I was given the option to transfer files from Macintosh to 'This Mac' (i.e. the SSD) which I chose - this took another couple of hours.
Once complete, it booted up fine and now finally displays the Crucial SSD under 'About this Mac'.

I then transferred the drives over, putting the SSD in the Mac Book and now works great. Also enabled TRIM in terminal.

I can only guess there was some glitch in the superduper cloning process which prevented the boot up process.

If anyone forsees any problems with this approach would be keen to hear. Thanks