Hanging install of High Sierra with newly installed SSD

[mininyaba]

Hi all,

I just installed a Crucial SSD 500GB in my late-2012 mac mini. My plan is to run the OS + apps and photos off the SSD and pull my movies and music off of the original 1 TB internal drive.

The hardware installation went well and I was able to initialize the new SSD and it seems to be fully recognized by the system and good to go. However, when i boot in recovery mode (command+R) and attempt to install High Sierra onto the new SSD, the installation hangs with "2 minutes remaining" every time. I've tried letting it site, even as long as 10+ hours, but it still does not complete the installation.

Would anyone happen to know of another easy way to drop OS X onto the new drive, or a fix for this issue i'm running into? Thanks in advance for your help!

 

[treekram]

You used Recovery, not Internet Recovery, correct? Internet Recovery would have the spinning globe after you press either Option-Command-R or Shift-Option-Command-R.

Just regular Recovery Mode is typically used to reinstall the OS on the disk where the recovery partition resides - presumably your 1TB HDD. I don't know if it can successfully install the OS on another drive from regular Recovery Mode.

Can you still boot into your HDD? If so, and if you don't have a backup, you should make sure you have a backup using Time Machine if you don't have any other backup software. If you haven't done backup before, you should get a blank HDD and do that.

So presuming you have a backup and you just want to put High Sierra on the SSD. You have different options.

1) If you can boot from the HDD and it works, you can go to the App Store and download the High Sierra installer to the HDD and run the installer from there and target the SSD.

2) You can run Internet Recovery (Option-Command-R when you power-on/restart the computer after the chime) and target the SSD. Warning: it takes a while for Internet Recovery to get up and running (minutes, not hours, though).

There's some good information here:
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204904

3) If you already have High Sierra on the HDD and you have a Time Machine backup, you can use Recovery mode to restore to the SSD. This would only work if you have enough disk space on the SSD and it's really only a good option if you're having a problem with your Internet connection. On the other hand, it might be a good option if you don't want to spend time re-installing non-Apple apps on the SSD and don't mind then erasing whatever data you want to keep on the HDD from the SSD.

 

[mininyaba]

Thanks for your time and suggestions. I just wanted to follow-up as I am still struggling to install High Sierra on the SSD.

In reference to your suggestions:

1) When I download High Sierra and try to install on the SSD, the installation stalls (not really a freeze, as the system is still responsive) on "2 minutes remaining" and, despite my patience (ie 24+ hours) it does not complete.

2) Internet recovery results in the same.

3) Even working with a time machine restore does not work. I have tried a few times (making sure restore size is well under the 500GB SSD size) - it begins the process and the system starts up to uptick the number of GBs that have transferred over. I have attempted this 10+ times and each time the restore fails before it is complete. Afterward, the HD is renamed and needs to be reformatted.

Anyway, it's all a little frustrating. I am planning to try again once Mojave is released with the hope that will magically work at that time.

If anyone has experienced a similar issue and found a solution, I am all ears! Thanks!

 

[Fishrrman]

1. Download the HS installer (if you don't have it already)
2. Download either "DiskMaker X" or "Boot Buddy"
3. You'll need a USB flashdrive 8gb or larger
4. Use either DMx or BB (above) to create a bootable flashdrive installer
5. Boot from the installer, but...
6. DON'T attempt to install yet
7. Open Disk Utility and ERASE the SSD to Mac OS extended with journaling enabled, GUID partition format. It might also be a good idea to run DU's "repair disk" function on the SSD, make sure it's ok.
8. Close DU and re-open the OS installer, "aim it" at the SSD.
9. Try installing now. Any difference?

 

[treekram]

Have you been trying to solve this problem for almost two months?

Do you have the original HDD with the OS intact? For myself, I have always had better luck doing a new OS install by running the install program from a running OS (HDD or SSD) targeting another disk vs. a USB installer install. I have not used Recovery (Internet or local) to install the OS so I don't have experience with how well that works.

You should check to see if you have a file /var/log/install.log on the SSD. It's very verbose so you'd have to look towards the end to see what, if any errors are there . However, if you reformat after every try, this file won't exist.

After the failed attempts, in Disk Utility, before you reformat, have you noticed what format your SSD ends up with - APFS or Mac OS Extended? I'm presuming you're reformatting to HFS+ (Mac OS Extended). One thing to make sure, as mentioned in the previous post, that you have the GUID Partition Map or Scheme.