Q: SATA SSD is not recognized by the Disk Utility
Hello,
I've just purchased my first Mac Mini late 2014 (Core i7 3.0 GHz, 16GB RAM, with Fusion Drive capable hard drive tray) on Ebay.
The seller didn't include the original hard drive, so I purchased a SATA SSD (SanDisk SSD Plus 480GB) and a SATA cable from a SSD upgrade kit.
I tried to fit the SSD on the hard drive tray, but the SATA cable was too short to reach the socket on the logic board, and that I don't plan on using PCIe SSD in the future, so I removed the hard drive tray and installed the SATA SSD with double-sided tape which fits perfectly in the space and was able to connect the SATA cable with the logic board without any problems.
I made a bootable USB memory stick for El Capitan and booted the Mac Mini with Command key pressed.
I went to Disk Utility within the installer, but I found no SSD in the system.
Are there any steps that I missed or is this Mac Mini model not compatible with SATA SSD?
I'd greatly appreciate your input.
Thanks,
pinakes
Mac mini, OS X El Capitan (10.11.6)
Posted on Jul 30, 2016 10:00 AM