Mac Pro 3,1 SSD and Yosemite Issues

[apple.fiend]

Hey everyone,

So I have always been running a SSD in my Mac Pro since they day I bought it. Its been a 120GB Kingston drive, nothing fancy. Since the size was too small, Ive always had my Home folder on another drive. Been working amazing for last 2 years, not a single issue.

I recently wanted to upgrade my boot SSD to a larger drive so I can have more room to play with and not have to worry about how much stuff I can install on it. I purchased a Samsung EVO 840 250GB SSD and formatted it and installed Yosemite no problems. The problems started whenever I try to use Time Machine to recover my old data since I do not want to start everything from scratch, just want to migrate to a larger capacity drive.

Here's what I did, I removed all data from folder on my Home folder and moved them to an external drive. I then moved my Home folder back on to original SSD and made Time Machine backup, so it could all fit on the new drive (before it was 120GB boot SSD + 1.5TB Home folder drive).

I'd mess around and suddenly drive starts to give me headaches. I noticed permissions were wonky, no doubt from the previous setup involving the Home folder on another disk, so I used the Get Info panel to basically reset permissions and then applied to enclosed. This seems to be the trouble since my new SSD now refuses to boot properly.

I restarted my Mac, make it past the opening logo, and then I'm stuck on a grey screen. All I see is the mouse cursor, and nothing else happens. Just gets stuck on a blank grey screen. I've tried everything from repairing permissions, to repairing disk and it says its all good yet always refuses to boot. I've formatted the disk and reinstalled Yosemite at least twice now, each time with same issue. I get it to work then when I use Time Machine to add original account, it goes haywire. I'm too afraid to mess with original boot SSD since I dont want to ruin that as well.

Any insights as to what is actually going on and what I can do fix this situation? In the end I will most likely just re do everything from scratch but I want to avoid that as its a pain to get everything exactly as it was before.

 

[yaboo007]

It can be a driver issue on your ssd. You may need to get trim. I would just install from scratch and manually just transfer data and reinstall apps.

 

[IowaLynn]

I have been following a Reader Report on MacIntouch regarding TimeMachine, Storage (esp. SSD) - worth a look.

One thing I read is that at least some of the time, Migration Assistant, even today, is not without problems while Setup Assistant seems safe.

TimeMachine can also have problems and you should/could/ought to look into supplementing with Carbon Copy Cloner or something else you feel good about.

Having TRIM as early as possible, so it is on the system that is used to clone to, helps.

With Yosemite of course there is a new wrinkle. Consider having a small system drive that has TRIM but is never used to do system updates - just for system maintenance, that has TRIM enabled on it.

Prices on 850 EVO are even nicer now making 250 and 500GB more affordable, and 128GB $69 (Amazon). Now if only the XP941 500GB would drop!

 

[flehman]

You could buy a 2.5" Apple OEM SSD that was pulled from another machine. They are expensive on eBay but they get you around the problems of TRIM on Yosemite without any hacking. I've seen both Samsung and Toshiba SSDs. I would also second the advice of using Carbon Copy Cloner and not just Time Machine. I enjoy much peace of mind knowing that I can instantly boot to a clone if there is ever a problem with my main drive.