I was hoping someone could help me answer this because I feel lost. I recently purchased the 480gb SSD for my Macbook Pro and was able to easily physically install it. It worked fine the first day and left my computer on over night. When I woke up the next day the screen was white so I restarted the computer and when it booted up it gave me a white screen with a flashing folder and question mark.
When I start it up holding option to try and reinstall Lion, it won’t display the hard drive for me. Do you know what could be the cause of this? I am going to try the firmware upgrade tonight when I get home but not sure if that is the proble. Thanks in advance guys.
By the firmware update tool, you mean the ISO file I am supposed to burn to a dvd and then run? Am I supposed to run that while I have my original hard drive installed and then once it is installed I can put in the new ssd? Thanks again in advance for my newb questions.
Heres an update. I went to the apple store last night and bought an adaptor for hard drives that run through the fire wire…when I plug the ssd in there, i can run it without a hitch. The problem is when I connect it internally with the SATA cable. The original hard drive still works internally. I also was able to upgrade the firmware for the 480gb ssd. Any ideas? Thanks again in advance guys. It is much appreciated!
If I put the SSD back in where? If i plug it in to the SATA cable inside the computer it won’t load. When I run it through the firewire adaptor then it does load and it does show up in disk utility.
If it works as an external I’m taking a wild guess that there’s something up with the partition table. If anything isn’t right with this, the drive won’t boot.
I was saying to put the SSD back in the machine, boot off the lion install disk or whatever came with the computer, and access disk utility through this. Do not try to boot off the actual ssd. If disk utility sees the drive, format and try to set it up again with a GUID partition table and then follow with a fresh OS install.
Cruzmisl, I apologize in advance for my naivity. So putting it back in the machine is easy enough. My question is how do I boot off the lion install disk? Or should I put the original hard drive on the adaptor and boot it off of that and then go into disk utility to see if it recognizes the ssd.
Secondly, How would I set up a GUID partition table? and once that is done I assume just start it up again hitting the option key and reinstalling it that way on the ssd?
Thanks again and I respectfully await your response.
EDIT: OK, I forgot that you had Lion and you didn’t get a support disc, just a recovery partition on your stock HDD.
I would create a recovery disk on a thumb drive and use it to install onto the new SSD. This is kind of how I installed Mountain Lion onto my 240GB extreme 2 weeks ago.
Back up your important data. Partitioning a hard disk erases all data on the disk.
Open Disk Utility:
- If you're started from a Mac OS X installation disc, choose **Disk Utility** from the **Utilities** menu.
- If you're started from your computer's Mac OS X volume, open Disk Utility from the Utilities folder. You can get there by choosing **Utilities** from the Finder's **Go** menu.
Select the disk you want to partition (that is, the disk you want to install Mac OS X on. The disk contains size and model number of the drive, not “Macintosh HD” or a name you chose.
Click the Partition tab in the Disk Utility window. If the partition tab is not visible, make sure you’ve selected thedisk (not volume) in the left side of the window.
Tip : In Disk Utility, volume names are indented on the left side of the window. Disk names are not indented.
5. Choose the desired number of partitions from the Volume Scheme pop-up menu. It’s OK to choose “1 Partition” if you only want one.
6. Click Options.
Note: On some Intel-based Macs, the Options button does not appear under the partition tab. Use the erase tab to erase the disk instead. This will change the partition scheme to the default “GUID Partition Scheme”. You can then use the partition tab to create additional partitions if desired.
From the Partition Scheme pop-up menu, choose “GUID Partition Scheme”.
Click OK.
Make any other changes you wish in the Volume Information section, such as partition size(s) or naming.
Click the Partition button to erase your disk and install the new partition scheme.
When partitioning finishes, you should be able to install Mac OS X on the volume. Afterwards, you can restore backed-up data.
Should I do this while it is connected to the external adaptor through the thunderbolt? The computer doesn’t recognize it when it is plugged into the SATA cable.
I realize that you’re saying you cannot get the system to see the drive to boot off of, so the reason I’m asking you to make a USB Lion boot drive is to get disk utility open when the SSD is installed into the computer.
IF you get to disk utility from booting off the Lion USB thumbdrive, and the SSD still isn’t showing up at all within disk utility from there, then something is wrong.
Create Lion boot usb thumb drive
Turn off computer
Install SSD into computer
Boot off of Lion usb thumb drive
Open up disk utility from the top menu after booting from Lion usb thumb drive
Ah I see. I’ll let you know within the next 2 hours whether it is a success or not. If it doesn’t recognize it with this method any other ideas? Its odd, last night I was still tinkering around trying to figure it out and i plugged it in the computer and my original in the adaptor and started the computer up holding option. I went into disk utility and lo and behold it showed up there. However, it wasn’t letting me erase it. I backed out of disk utility and went to the install os and when I did that, it didn’t find the drive anymore so when I went back to disk utlity to see if it was still there, it was gone.
Thanks again bud for all the help it’s been really useful especially because the guys at the apple store don’t care to even give me guidance because its a third party hardware.
Sorry to report that that did not work. I can boot off the usb but in disk utility, the SSD isn’t recognized. Any other ideas because I am fresh out of them :\
Ooh, OK, here’s one thing to try. I read that some people had to do this to resolve random SSD install issues. Assuming you still have an OS installed on the SSD, try resetting the NVRAM with the SSD installed into the computer.
Shut down your Mac.
Locate the following keys on the keyboard: Command (⌘), Option, P, and R. You will need to hold these keys down simultaneously in step 4.
Turn on the computer.
Press and hold the Command-Option-P-R keys before the gray screen appears.
Hold the keys down until the computer restarts and you hear the startup sound for the second time.
So heres an update. I tried what you said about the command option p and r. I started up the computer holding the option button with the SSD atttached to the SATA cable and it popped up in disk utility so I did an erase with the GUID Partition and then tried to download Lion through the network install and went to bed. When I woke up the download had failed saying something like additional components were not downloaded and now when I restart it the SSD isn’t showing up? Any other ideas? Thanks again for all your help.
Well, it seems like the PRAM/NVRAM reset had some success. If the Lion install failed, it still won’t see the drive as a boot disk though, so that doesn’t surprise me.
As I mentioned before, I would create the USB stick (have at least a 8gb usb thumb drive and make it an Lion/osx drive) and use it to install Lion onto the installed SSD from the directions in the other post. Installing it this way instead of a network install will make sure it’s installed properly–and it will also install much, much faster.
Edit: I’m sorry, I missed a step with the USB install method. I think through the Apple method, you only get the option of the network install. It would be much better to make a complete install drive with this (free) app:
This is what I used after I downloaded Mountain Lion on my old drive to easily install my new SSD. However, since Lion came with your Mac and didn’t come with any OS discs(only a recovery partition on your stock HDD), you have to go through some weird ■■■■ to try and get it off. There are some instructions on how to do it though.
Honestly, I would use this as an excuse to purchase & download Mountain Lion and make a easy, legitimate USB boot/install drive with the App mentioned above. This is what I did, and I had 0 issues with installation, and it only took 20 minutes or so to get it set up.
I’m just curious–how did you first install Lion onto your new SSD on that first day?
It was kind of a fluke. I travel a lot for work and I was putting the computer back together and stuck the ssd in the computer and just tried to start it up with Option and it worked and by that time it was too late to start it up with the usb so I tried the network install and, like you said, took hoursss lol (Hilton doesn’t have the best internet connection). I am going to keep trying it this way and if not I am going to write new egg a strongly worded letter as they don’t do refunds on this item.
I know it would ■■■■ to put in another $20, but Mountain Lion is much better than Lion, and getting the install app to easily make a USB install key will save you a lot of hassle from network installs on **bleep**ty net connections.
When I first got it I just it did with the network install. The second time I did it with the USB method. I’m just repeating steps to see if I made a mistake. Unfortunately it hasn’t worked. I do have mountain lion already so I will try that again.
