SSD Hard drive issue

[Mbira]

Heck, maybe someone here would have an answer to this!  Hi,
have one of the 2010 17" macbook pros. I am wanting to swap my internal hard drive with a SSD. I made a clone of the drive with Carbon Copy Cloner. My SSD was attached with a firewire external drive. After the clone was completed, I restarted holding the "option" key and I was given the option to select the external drive. I started from there and everything looked great-the clone worked. I then took out my internal drive and put the SSD drive in the mac and when restarting, I just get a grey screen with a folder with a question mark. I then put the old drive back in and the computer works.

For some reason, my computer is able to use the SSD if it is in an external drive bay, but not if it's internal.

Anyone have an idea of what could be going on?

 

[dissonantstring]

hi joel,
the icon of a folder with a question mark indicates that there is no OS on the drive from which you are booting (at least in my experience).  I am unfamiliar with carbon copy cloner, but I've simply used disk utility.  look in your applications > utilities > disk utility.
open up disk utility and click on the restore tab.  you should have the SSD drive externally connected and showing on your desktop (orange disk icon).  when you proceed with a disk utility restore use your Macintosh HD as the source and the external SSD as your destination and proceed with your restore. This will copy your entire HD onto the SSD (when asked to erase SSD say yes when making a clone).  if the SSD was initialized correctly as stated previously, it should show up as an orange disk icon on your desktop along with your Macintosh HD (make sure you have show HD on desktop in Finder preferences).
let me know if you have more questions and good luck.
grant

 

[keefaz]

Just a thought. When you selected the external HD to boot with and then changed the internal drive, maybe your mac memorized it should boot from external drive on next boot. So it doesn't find an attached external drive and then gives the question mark ?

 

[mitsos]

If you could boot from your SSD in firewire you should be able to boot with it inside the mac. Did you try holding option when booting with the SSD inside?  If that allows you to boot then keefaz is probable right and you need to go to system prefs -> system -> startup disk and select your SSD. 

If holding option with only the SSD connected doesn't work, try it with your old drive connected through firewire. Boot from it if you have to, and then see if you can find the SSD in the start up disk selection. 

I've always used Carbon Copy Cloner for this kind of thing and it has always worked for me.  Hope you get it working.  If not, check the apple forums and google, you'll likely get more help there.

 

[Mbira]

Well long story short, after three days, I managed to get the SSD to at least appear in the Disk Utility when inside the mac.  I used a USB enclosure instead of the firewire enclosure and that seemed to work (though the firewire works every other time)....whatever-I'm done now!

 

[bruce0]

Did you happen to re-format the new drive during the switch to USB?  It is important that the new drive is formatted as GUID.

If you could boot off it as a firewire drive, it should have worked as an internal. 

 

[CJ]

OT:  yearbook pic, sync separator on the chalkboard, and some Apple dude on the right,

 

[Mbira]

If you could boot off it as a firewire drive, it should have worked as an internal.

Yes, but it didn't.  It was GUID.  Even the old drive would not show up on the firewire-BUT only if the SSD was internal.  If I took out the internal SSD, the old drive would show up on the Firewire.  It was just weirdness all around.  Even took it the the apple store and they tried with a different firewire drive and it didn't work.  They didn't know why.  But now that the SSD is in and formatted, all works well...