Crucial m4 512 SSD disaster.

Question

Crucial m4 512 SSD disaster.

Hi guys,

Having some trouble getting my Crucial SSD 512GB (latest firmware) to work with Lion.

First, I formated the drive with disk utility, then cloned my HDD to the SSD with SuperDuper. From that point, the drive no loger existed acording my computer. I tried to boot from my shell with the drive still external. No dice, the drive was not even an option. I tried again after installing the drive into the MBP on it's own. Again, nothing. When I rebooted with my original HDD and the drive plugged in externally into recovery mode, the drive was in fact there, and Repair Disk stated that the drive was corrupt. I went through the motions with that, and again, no dice.

Soooo... I reformatted again, with the intention of booting to the SSD and installing Lion clean from a boot USB, then restoring to a Time Machine backup.

So after reformatting the SSD, I did nothing except leave the drive plugged in and rebooted. The MBP STILL does not recognize the drive. What the **** is going on here? Do I have a bad drive? Or am I doing something wrong? Seems like it should be pretty straight forward, but it's slowly turning into a $600 disaster.

Please help!

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.7.3)

Posted on Apr 7, 2012 8:51 PM

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Answer 1

Kappy

Level 10

362,007 points

Apr 7, 2012 8:57 PM in response to Johnnyribcage

You should contact Crucial for support. Or perhaps return the product and buy an SSD from OWC.

Did you parition the drive before formatting and use the GUID parition scheme?

Do not use SuperDuper to clone a Lion drive as it is not the best tool. Use Disk Utility.

Are you trying to use a 6.0 Gbps device in a MBP that only supports 1.5 or 3.0 Gbps SATA drives?

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Answer 2

Apr 7, 2012 11:19 PM in response to Kappy

Why should I have to partition the drive after formatting mac os extended journaled then cloning a Lion HDD? Cloning is supposed to mean cloning right? I cloned my HDD directly to a properly formatted SSD. Why would it not work? I am using a 6.0 Gpbs device that is SATA III and is supposedly backwards compatable to II and on an updated firmware 5.1 Macbook pro.

I've read about a zillion success stories online from people with my exact same system and exact same SSD. The **** worked the first time out of the box for those people and I'm slowly getting madder than I can put into words that this won't just work.

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Answer 3

petermac87

Level 5

7,453 points

Apr 8, 2012 1:46 AM in response to Johnnyribcage

Judging from you last paragraph, I would second Kappy's advice to contact Crucial, if zillionns of others can do it. It would pretty much point directly to a problem with that ssd.

Good Luck

Pete

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Answer 4

Shootist007

Level 6

16,709 points

Apr 8, 2012 3:16 AM in response to Johnnyribcage

You could have a bad drive, it happens.

Next thing to check and try is to intall the drive in the system or just connecting it to the system as an external and try to install any version of OS X that works with your model MBP. Lion, Snow Leopard or Leopard and see if it can install on that drive. If not then the drive is bad and needs to be replaced.

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Answer 5

Kappy

Level 10

362,007 points

Apr 8, 2012 10:29 AM in response to Johnnyribcage

Then don't do it. Obviously, you know more about it than I. Why bother with the suggestion.

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Answer 6

db4645

Level 1

0 points

Sep 19, 2012 8:13 AM in response to Johnnyribcage

I had a 'spinning beachball' issue with my Crucial M4 2.5" 256GB SSD, and found the following fix. NOTE: Do NOT update Firmware to the most recent version released 04/2012 (000F). Make sure to have your SSD backed up prior to update, unless of course you're trying to re-load.

========

The SSD firmware version is stored on the SSD itself so the upgrade does not need to be carried out on the system the SSD will be used in. The easiest way to upgrade the firmware is by connecting the SSD to a system that has a CD drive.

If this is not possible, you can follow these steps to create a bootable USB flash drive and upgrade the firmware from that.

1. Connect an empty USB flash drive

2. Download rEFIt-syslinux from the link below. This will allow your USB drive to be recognized as a startup volume by the Mac.

http://blog.io101.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/rEFIt-Syslinux.dmg_.zip

3. Mount the dmg. This will mount two volumes called 'rEFIt' and 'SYSLINUX'

4. Open a Terminal and take a note of which volume is which with the command <diskutil list>

e.g. /dev/disk1 for the USB drive and /dev/disk2 for the dmg

5. Unmount (NOT eject) both volumes, after you have confirmed the two new volumes (e.g. disk1 & disk2):

diskutil unmountDisk /dev/disk1

diskutil unmountDisk /dev/disk2

You should get a message saying you were successful

6. Copy the dmg onto the USB drive:

dd if=/dev/disk2 of=/dev/disk1 bs=1m

You should get a message detailing the number of records in and out and number of bytes transferred

7. Eject both:

diskutil eject /dev/disk1

diskutil eject /dev/disk2

8. Unplug and plug back in the USB drive and mount the SYSLINUX volume

9. Download the firmware version 0309 for the M4 SSD here:

http://edge.crucial.com/firmware/m4/0309/Crucialm4_0309.zip

10. Unzip and mount the firmware ISO and go into the folder BOOT, then ISOLINUX

11. Copy the contents into the SYSLINUX volume

12. Delete the existing file syslinux.cfg and rename ISOLINUX.CFG to syslinux.cfg

13. Reboot your mac and hold the option key to select a boot volume and select the eEFIt volume, then choose the "Boot legacy OS SYSLINUX' option

14. Follow the instructions to update the firmware.

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