Mini boots with new cloned drive externally, but not internally.

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Mini boots with new cloned drive externally, but not internally.

Hi.

I bought a new, bigger and faster HD for my early 2009 Mac mini (10.8.2) and cloned my original drive with Carbon Copy Cloner, making sure to include the hidden recovery partition. Using a USB to SATA adapter, I can boot from the new drive no problem. However, when I open up the mini and replace the old drive with the new one, all I get is the folder with question mark that blinks. I've tried holding down option when rebooting to get to the recovery partition, but all I get is the WiFi log in, no drives or any other options to choose from. If my Time Machine drive is connected, that does appear but fails to do anything if I click on it. (When the old drive is in, I can access the new drive just fine, and can even boot into the new drive's recovery mode.) Is there some step I'm missing, or some troubleshooting I can do that I'm not aware of?

Thanks.

Mac mini (Early 2009), OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.2)

Posted on Dec 5, 2012 8:17 PM

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Answer 1

RRFS

Level 5

4,522 points

Dec 5, 2012 8:35 PM in response to patrickkerr

It sounds as though the connector for your drive didn't get seated properly.

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Answer 2

patrickkerr Author

Level 1

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Dec 6, 2012 12:57 PM in response to RRFS

RRFS wrote:

It sounds as though the connector for your drive didn't get seated properly.

If by that you mean it wasn't secure inside the computer, you could be right, but I pulled the drive in and out three separate times as I opened and closed the machine to exchange the old and new drives a few times and always tried to make sure it was nice and snug in there.

Thanks for the response.

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