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User profile for user: Launemax
Launemax Author
User level: Level 1
5 points

Booting from external SSD on mac mini (late 2014)

Hy Community,


a very strange behaviour occurs since my update to Big Sur. I've cloned my OSX (Big Sur) + Data from the HDD from mac mini (late 2014) to an external SSD Drive successfully to use the same instance with my MacBook Air.


For some reason the mac mini (late 2014) won't boot from this SSD. There is no SSD in the startup device in the system settings. But I can see my SSD in the finder. The mac mini is booting everytime from the HDD.


It doesn't even show my the bootmanager or the disk utility tool on boot... no shortcuts work.

I've also tried to reset VRAM, but it didnt work, because no shortcuts work at all.


BUT:

My MacBook Air can boot from the SSD without any issues. So the Data on the SSD must be valid.


Sidenote: I've partitioned the SSD as APFS-Container without Encryption Lettercase insensitive. My HDD is identical with the SSD (same fileformat, same partitions).


Hopefully someone can help me with this issue.

Kind regards,

Jochen aka Launemax

Mac mini, macOS 11.1

Posted on Jan 28, 2021 12:20 AM

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User profile for user: Launemax
Launemax Author
User level: Level 1
5 points

Posted on Jan 28, 2021 9:12 AM

Yes, i used CCC5 for this.


I found the issue:

Everything was fine, except for the keyboard. I've used a generic keyboard and maybe the drivers weren't loaded at boot time or the special keys were sending a different signals.


Anyways. I've found an old original mac keyboard and then the bootkeys worked. This time the bootmanager show up and ... fortunately the SSD was listed! 🎉

So I was able to boot from SSD successfully.


Thanks for your help @Matti. The link gave me an idea about the issue.


kind regards.

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply
User profile for user: Launemax
Launemax Author
User level: Level 1
5 points

Jan 28, 2021 9:12 AM in response to Launemax

Yes, i used CCC5 for this.


I found the issue:

Everything was fine, except for the keyboard. I've used a generic keyboard and maybe the drivers weren't loaded at boot time or the special keys were sending a different signals.


Anyways. I've found an old original mac keyboard and then the bootkeys worked. This time the bootmanager show up and ... fortunately the SSD was listed! 🎉

So I was able to boot from SSD successfully.


Thanks for your help @Matti. The link gave me an idea about the issue.


kind regards.

topic can be closed.

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User profile for user: Milzner
Milzner
User level: Level 1
8 points

Jan 30, 2021 4:53 PM in response to Launemax

Hi,


I have a similar perplexing problem.


I'm running a mac mini (late 2012) as my office desktop on Catalina 10.15.7 and as it's slowed down and beachballing more frequently lately, so I decided to upgrade it with Crucial 16gb ram and a Crucial MX500 SSD 1TB to use as an external drive, I want to keep it external so I can also use it with my MacBook air. I bought a Posugear sata hard drive enclosure to house the SSD using USB 3.0 connection (in Disk Utilities its named as 'JMicron Tech Media').


Here's the problem:

I've successfully cloned the SSD from my mac mini HD using Carbon Copy Cloner software, however I am unable to boot my mac mini from the SSD. It is visible on the mac mini - i can see it in Finder & Disk Utilities and it also appears under System Preferences>Startup Disk (where I have selected it as the start up disk), however, I am unable to get the SSD to boot whatever I try. I've restarted with 'Ctrl' held down but the only drive that appears is my old mac HD.


I wondered if it might be a faulty/incompatible enclosure but when i use the SSD with my MacBook Air and hold down 'ctrl' on start up the SSD was recognised and was able to boot it successfully on there. Although, a further problem has developed in that when I restart the Mac Air (having changed the start up disk to the external SSD in sys preferences) it boots again from the internal HD not from SSD. Also when I then restarted the Mac Air again and held down 'ctrl' the SSD no longer appeared. I wonder if the SSD enclosure is somehow going to sleep when the PC restarts/shuts down without unplugging it? (there is no on/off switch for the HD enclosure).


I hope I've described my problem adequately and i'd be really grateful if anyone can help me solve this - i've wasted best part of 2 days trying to muddle along myself!


Many thanks,

Craig

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Booting from external SSD on mac mini (late 2014)

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