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Mac Mini 2011 custom SSD can't boot (crossed circle) but shows up fine in finder

Tom71

Tom71

macrumors regular
Original poster
Apr 27, 2010
120
9
Hi Guys,

pulling my hair out about this one.

I got a mac mini 2011 and had this old 512gb kingston ssd lying around. As everyone says, if you go from SSD back to normal HDD then you will be amazed by how fast SSD really is.

So I swapped out the HDD for my SSD and powered on but would only get the crossed circle.

When holding the option key, I will get two drives to boot from:
Macintosh HD & Macintosh HD (recovery).

Selecting either of them will result in the crossed circle and no-go.

Booting up from the original hdd put into a USB enclosure, I see the SSD fine and can access it and reformat / repartition / whatever it.

I tried internet recovery thru the attached USB but when I came home the system was off and upon turning it on it came with the crossed circle again (I suspect the install ran thru and it tried to reboot but then cannot reboot and the system powers down automatically if it's been a while on the screen where it shows the crossed circle.

The crossed circle, if you haven't seen it, comes instead of the apple logo that happens normally seconds after you powered one the device.

Anyone any clues?

Thanks,

Tom
 
If I'm supposing right, you had a Lion Install on that SSD before putting it in your Mac Mini and didn't format it beforehand.

The crossed circle means you are trying to launch an unsupported version of Lion or any associated tools, like the recovery HD. The version you have on your SSD is the generic build made for Macs sold before Mid-July. You need the newer build and this means Format/Reinstall via the Lion Internet Recovery function of your Mini's firmware (cmd+option+r at the chime)

If this does not work, like it did for me, pop in the stock HDD, or boot on it from USB (if you didn't format it), download the Lion Recovery Disk Assistant to create a Mac Mini specific USB Recovery thumb drive, execute it, and then try the Lion Recovery by booting on it.
 
MrReed said:
If I'm supposing right, you had a Lion Install on that SSD before putting it in your Mac Mini and didn't format it beforehand.
Click to expand...
Something along the lines - I had it taken from my Macbook Pro that had lion on it.

philipma1957 said:
USE Superduper and clone the oem drive to the ssd. then boot the ssd.
Click to expand...

Yes I think I'm gonna do that. I've initially already pulled the notebook's data onto the stock drive of the Mini.

I'll report back how it does, thanks guys.

Tom
 
How i got my SSD working -

boot into the recovery mode to run Disk Utility

restore the original hard drive onto the SSD (attached via USB enclosure)

Swap hard drives over

Job done.
 
Thanks guys, it's working now - I've used superduper.

The internet recovery would sit for ages on "installing" (perhaps my WLAN's fault).

Thanks guys!

And having said that, maybe it is just me but working off a HDD is just unbearable slow nowadays. Perhaps much of the slowness stemmed from the initial spotlight index but it was real pain. Glad I'm on SSD again.

Tom
 
I had this happen when I took my SSD drive from my Mac Mini 2009 and installed it thinking it would boot into Lion, but I got that circle with a line through it. I did everything I could think off and eventually had to just remove the drive and wipe it. I just left it raw like it was a new SSD. This time when I started my new 2011 Mac Mini it automatically started the Internet Recovery Process. It took it about 8 minutes to download installation setup. Then I used disk utilities to partition and format. Once that was done, I started the installation which of course it has to download. It took about 30 minutes and then another 20 to install, so in about 50 minutes I was up and running with my SSD.

It seems if there is anything else on the drive it won't even give you the option to do the internet recovery. I purchased a 2nd SSD 6gb/s that I installed in the Mac Mini server and of course because it was raw internet recovery started right up.
 
I am sorrily in the same situation. Does someone know how to install lion on the mm2011 when SSD and HDD are formated?

Is the internet recovery and following install of lion directly on the SSD working?
 
tobiasb said:
I am sorrily in the same situation. Does someone know how to install lion on the mm2011 when SSD and HDD are formated?

Is the internet recovery and following install of lion directly on the SSD working?
Click to expand...

I'm also trying to run SSD's in my new 2011 Mini. Internet restore does work but the performance is horrid for two SSD's in RAID. My topic
Is this a Mini firmware flaw or SSD firmware issue?!
 
tobiasb said:
I am sorrily in the same situation. Does someone know how to install lion on the mm2011 when SSD and HDD are formated?

Is the internet recovery and following install of lion directly on the SSD working?
Click to expand...

You can use the internet recovery built in to the Mac mini's firmware to reinstall Lion on a blank SSD, but be aware that it will need to redownload the entire 4+ GB operating system image, so - depending on your connection speed - you may be in for a wait.
 
xraydoc said:
You can use the internet recovery built in to the Mac mini's firmware to reinstall Lion on a blank SSD, but be aware that it will need to redownload the entire 4+ GB operating system image, so - depending on your connection speed - you may be in for a wait.
Click to expand...

Yeah, like 5+ hours!! I had made bootable usb sticks with Lion that worked just fine on older hardware, but get the circle/x on the new mini, kinda sucks that the only way is to wait forever to download. Was hoping the usb assistant stick I used would actually have a little more on it than a bootstrap.

As I wait on my 10-15 mb circuit.
 
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