I’m having an issue trying to replace a failed HDD in my late-2009 Mac Mini with a new, blank, 480GB SD Ultra II.
The original drive is almost completely dead - click of death - so I’m unable to use it to initialize / clone the SSD.
When I pull the old drive out and install (very carefully) the new SSD I get the following behavior:
- Power light
- Startup chime
- Brief green light on Apple wireless keyboard
- Gray/white dislay
None of the keyboard actions that should control the boot sequence do anything - Opt-R doesn’t get me the boot drive picker, control-opt-R doesn’t get internet recovery, ‘c’ doesn’t boot from the OSX install DVD that shipped with the system…
If I try using a Lenovo USB keyboard instead, it doesn’t appear to do anything - no lights and none of the boot option key combos do anything either (ctrl-alt-r, alt-r, c, etc).
If I put the old drive back in then the keyboard works, boot option shortcuts work, etc, it’ll boot from the install DVD…
I put the SD Ultra II into a Windows laptop and verified that the BIOS recognizes it (but I don’t have any bootable media to try anything else on that front) so the SSD is nominally alive and not just an empty plastic shell.
The behavior on the Mini (both SSD and old drive) has peristed through several disassemble-swap-reassemble passes, so I’m pretty confident that no cables are pinched, disconnected, loose, etc.
Suggestions would be appreciated. I’m working on locating an external SATA dock so I can verify the SSD’s functionality from my Windows system.