(Mac Mini mid-2011) Installing an SSD drive as a replacement of the HDD

Théophane wrote:

- what will happen when I first boot my Mini after I replaced the HDD with the SSD ? As of now, this drive is in stock state, I guess not even formatted and empty.

Your Mac may not start up or the Mac mini will start up into Internet Recovery. This will give you the option to format the SSD and install OS X.

If your Mac mini does not start up automatically into Internet Recovery, hold Command, Option (Alt) and R keys while your computer is starting up.

Théophane wrote:

- how will I be able to make a fresh install of Mavericks ? I made a bootable Mavericks install usb stick, but haven't found out a way yet to boot on it (I have a wireless Apple keyboard, and holding the cmd key when booting won't pop any disk manager)

You have to hold the Alt key while your computer is starting up in order to show all bootable partitions, so you will be able to choose the OS X Mavericks installer flash drive.

Then, format the SSD with Disk Utility > http://pondini.org/OSX/DU1.html Finally, close Disk Utility and reinstall OS X.

In case you want to clone your HDD to the SSD, you can use the Restore feature in Disk Utility to do it. Get a USB to SATA adapter, connect the HDD and follow these steps with Disk Utility > http://pondini.org/OSX/DU7.html Choose your HDD as "Source" and the SSD as "Destination". When you have finished, restart and disconnect your HDD.

Unless you really want a clean install of OSX, I would

(and have myself done twice) get a USB enclosure

or a USB to SATA adapter. and clone, using Carbon

Copy Cloner or Super Duper, to the SSD installed

in the enclosure. You can then verify all is working well

before setting off on the task of installing in the Mini

as it is somewhat of a task to do.

I would still use the same approach even if I wanted a

clean install, except instead of cloning, just install to the

external drive.

BTW, before doing either approach, make sure to partition

the drive as GUID (under options in the partition pane of

Disk Utility).

In addition, once the drive is installed in the Mini, be sure

to go to Start Up Disk in Preferences and actually select it

as the startup disk. Without doing this, the Mini will take much

longer to boot as there is no defined startup and it will spend time

trying to find a bootable volume.

Just note that the free SuperDuper program with not clone the recovery partition to the disk. CCC will. Also, you can just boot to Recovery partition and use the Disk Utility as Mendel 1 says, that copies both the working partition and the recovery partition.

Yes, that happens sometimes. Can you borrow a wired keyboard? You can use an USB PC keyboard

Keyboard mappings using a PC keyboard on a Macintosh

Your Safe bet steps are what I did when I installed an SSD in an early-2011 MBP.

I plugged in my external enclosure (containing the blank SSD) to my MBP and booted to my internal HDD. From my OS X Desktop, I opened Disk Utility and formated the SSD. Then, I went to the App Store and downloaded/installed OS X Mavericks to my SSD. After the install completed and rebooted to my SSD and at the setup screen, I powered off the MBP. Then I installed the SSD into the MBP, power it up while holding the Option/Alt key and selected the SSD to boot into. Last, I completed setup and pointed to my SSD as my Startup Disk.

Your Warrior approach steps will work also if you use your USB thumb drive that you created for OS X Mavericks. Your Step 2 would be to plug in your USB thumb drive, power up your Mac Mini and via your Wireless KB, press/hold the Option/Alt key until you get the startup manager and you can select your thumb drive. Then you can run Disk Utility to format your SSD and Reinstall OS X from the OS X Utilities menu.

As lllaass stated, a USB KB would definitely work. The Apple Wireless keyboard can be a little tricky and my experience has been you have to be patient, press the keys after the boot chime and keep them pressed until you see the screen you want.

If you try to use Internet Recovery in your Warrior step, since you have a mid-2011 Mac Mini, you might get OS X Lion or Mountain Lion as your OS X to install. This depends on what was pre-installed when you purchased your MM.