boot menu not loading when pressing option

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Level 1

8 points

boot menu not loading when pressing option

Decided to go to a larger hard drive, cloned the old one using carbon copy cloner. Both hard drives were installed in cradle. Went to system startup manager, selected the new drive to test if it will boot. Now computer plays chime, but doesn't continue the boot. All I have is a white screen. If I remove both drives, with no bootable drives I get the same. None of the startup keyboard shortcuts work, except for resetting the NVRam (command, option PR). I'm at wits end. It's like the boot manager screen is gone, recovery doesn't work because keyboard shortcuts seem to have no effect.

Late 2012 mac pro

samsung evo ssd 250gb old drive, 500gb new drive

32gb ram,

Have unplugged all usb accessories except a keyboard

Mac Pro, iOS 11.2.6

Posted on Feb 26, 2018 2:53 PM

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Answer 1

Tesserax

Level 10

148,447 points

Feb 26, 2018 3:07 PM in response to ryangiven

When you used CCC to clone the original drive in your Mac Pro, did you select the option: "Create an archive of Apple's Recovery HD Volume?" ... and also had CCC create the recovery partition on the destination drive?

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Answer 2

rkaufmann87

Level 10

140,532 points

Feb 26, 2018 3:12 PM in response to ryangiven

Put the cloned drive in a suitable enclosure. if you intend to use the clone for future backups, I'd strongly recommend getting an OWC (www.macsales.com) Mercury Elite Pro series or EHD. You can find them at:

Search Results for OWCME3 at MacSales.com

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Answer 3

ryangiven Author

Level 1

8 points

Feb 26, 2018 5:32 PM in response to rkaufmann87

I did the cloning using a drive caddy, then attempted the boot from the caddy. This was the first time I got the white screen. I powered off, removed the usb caddy, then attempted a reboot with the original drive. Nothing but a white screen. Computer will not bring up the boot selection menu, nor respond to any key presses. If all drives are pulled it does the same. Never gets the normal question mark screen.

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Answer 4

Feb 27, 2018 9:58 AM in response to ryangiven

There is one possible "is it plugged in?" type issue.

In order to be seen at Startup, your wired keyboard must be connected to a USB port on the chassis, not on a display or other Hub. Otherwise, the keystrokes are only seen when the Hub becomes active, which is too late for seeing Startup "snag keys".

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Answer 5

ryangiven Author

Level 1

8 points

Feb 27, 2018 1:44 PM in response to Tesserax

Yes, everything was still attached and in the old ports and places as usual. And to answer the other guys it keyboard and mouse were directly plugged in. So now for the good news, got it up and running today, it turns out that the time machine backup drive was preventing boot up. Pulled that drive and the new cloned drive works perfectly. My 1tb working drive works fine. All accessories and usb items work fine. The time machine drive won’t mount on OS X, Linux, or windows 10, pretty sure it’s toast. I’ve never seen one stopping boot up. I’m looking for a spare drive to format as a time machine backup to test if it’s the drive or time machine itself.

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