New 2011 Mac Mini Server Stuck Booting

[mdgm]

I have a new 2011 Mini Server that is stuck on booting.

I booted the Mini using Target disk mode, cloned the stock hard drive using SuperDuper, created a RAID-1 set using the stock hard drives, then restored from backup.

It's now stuck booting, but instead of showing the Apple logo it's showing a symbol a bit like a don't smoke symbol but without the cigarette. Any suggestions?

 

[OTACORB]

It is not finding the OS, my suggestion if you have a decent internet connection is to reboot command-R and do the Internet Recovery. This will insure that it is installed properly.

I know the symbol you are talking about, basically it is a circle with a line through it. I had this happen when I first setup a new drive on my Mac Mini using an existing SSD and because the Lion OS wasn't the exact one that came on the Mini I ended up having to do the Internet Recovery. Glad I did cause it gave me a really good clean install.

Just the simplest way to get around it, provided you have a decent internet connection.

 

[mdgm]

Solved it without needing to use Internet Recovery (started this, but it was taking way too long, so aborted it).

Two problems:

1. I had left Recovery HDD on.
2. I had cloned the Recovery HDD using dd

Solution.

I booted back into target disk mode, deleted partition and recreated RAID set and restored backup.

It still wouldn't work, so I created a recovery partition usb key using an older Mac. Then I used dd to overwrite the recovery partition on the USB key with the one from the 2011 Mini Server

I was able to use this to boot into the recovery HDD and when I quit I selected the startup disk as the one on the RAID set. It then proceeded to boot.