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El Capitan SSD Upgrade Issue

jblagden

jblagden

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Aug 16, 2013
1,162
641
I bought a 480 gigabyte PNY Solid State Drive yesterday and wanted to install OS X El Capitan on it, but I ran into an issue. I put the Solid State Drive in the hard drive bay and I connected my hard drive externally via a SATA to USB adapter. When I turned on my MacBook, it didn't boot from the hard drive despite the fact that it was directly connected and it was powered by an old PC's PSU. I turned my MacBook off and then restarted it and held the Option key after I heard the chime. But instead of being able to choose the boot drive, my MacBook only showed the option of Internet restoration. Why is this? Is this an issue with El Capitan? How do I fix this?

I upgraded the stock hard drive to a SSHD back in 2012, so I'm familiar with booting from an external drive and also choosing a boot drive at boot, but that was in OS X Mountain Lion and the procedure may have changed in El Capitan. Has the drive preparation procedure changed in OS X El Capitan?
 
Nothing has changed about El Capitan with regard to booting to an external drive. You should see it by booting with the option key. I wonder if it is related to the PC power supply method you are using to run the drive? I would just get a cheap USB enclosure and pop it in there to boot from.
 
Weaselboy said:
Nothing has changed about El Capitan with regard to booting to an external drive. You should see it by booting with the option key. I wonder if it is related to the PC power supply method you are using to run the drive? I would just get a cheap USB enclosure and pop it in there to boot from.
Click to expand...
I've never had an issue with that power supply, but I might as well try the power supply which came with my SATA-to-USB adapter.
 
SSDs (and USB flash drives) have been more problematic for me than spinning HDs in situations like this. I haven't found out why.

You didn't say what your procedure was going to be if everything had started up the way you expected but I've had great success leaving the original HD in, using Carbon Copy Cloner to clone to the new drive (including the Recovery partition) connected externally, then swapping the drives. However, I did one of these the other day and the 2012 MacBook Pro wouldn't even acknowledge the existence of the unformatted external drive connected via USB. Plugged it into my 2007 MBP and was able to format it no problem. The 2012 MBP recognized it right away when I plugged it back in. Weird!
 
BrianBaughn said:
SSDs (and USB flash drives) have been more problematic for me than spinning HDs in situations like this. I haven't found out why.

You didn't say what your procedure was going to be if everything had started up the way you expected but I've had great success leaving the original HD in, using Carbon Copy Cloner to clone to the new drive (including the Recovery partition) connected externally, then swapping the drives. However, I did one of these the other day and the 2012 MacBook Pro wouldn't even acknowledge the existence of the unformatted external drive connected via USB. Plugged it into my 2007 MBP and was able to format it no problem. The 2012 MBP recognized it right away when I plugged it back in. Weird!
Click to expand...
I'm going to install OS X El Capitan on the Solid State Drive connected internally and then use Migration Assistant to migrate things like documents, photos, movies, applications and settings.

Later, I'll decide which TV series' I'll add. My hard drive is a 750 gigabyte drive (of which I've used 600), so I won't be able to copy everything over to the Solid State Drive.
 
jblagden said:
I'm going to install OS X El Capitan on the Solid State Drive connected internally and then use Migration Assistant to migrate things like documents, photos, movies, applications and settings.

Later, I'll decide which TV series' I'll add. My hard drive is a 750 gigabyte drive (of which I've used 600), so I won't be able to copy everything over to the Solid State Drive.
Click to expand...

Makes sense. Did you format the new drive before putting it in?
 
Will my MacBook be able to boot from the Solid State Drive internally if I install OS X El Capitan on it externally?

I know it didn't work when I upgraded to my current hard drive, but I suppose either an OS or firmware update may have changed this, or it might be different for Solid State Drives.
 
Last edited:
Weaselboy said:
Nothing has changed about El Capitan with regard to booting to an external drive. You should see it by booting with the option key. I wonder if it is related to the PC power supply method you are using to run the drive? I would just get a cheap USB enclosure and pop it in there to boot from.
Click to expand...
I tried the power supply which came with my SATA adapter, but it didn't help. And yet, both power supplies worked with the Solid State Drive and also a 3.5 hard drive. So, it's not the adapter or the power supply.
 
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