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HELP! OS X Reinstall not working with new HD

M

mattridgely

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jun 16, 2015
6
0
I have a 2012 MBP and a couple of weeks ago, I got the blinking ? folder on boot up. The HD wasn't recognized in Disk Utility so I assumed that the HD was dead. I bought a Crucial MX100 256GB SATA 2.5-Inch Internal Solid State Drive (CT256MX100SSD1) off of Amazon and installed it. I don't have a OS X Installation disk so I booted using Option Control R into internet recovery. Went to disk utility to erase the new SSD and then went to reinstall OS X Mountain Lion, selected the new SSD as the location and started the install. On the Install OS X Mountain Lion page it gives an estimated time remaining of 15 hours so I let it run all day yesterday only to have it get down to about 9 hours and then go to that blinking ? folder again. I tried the same process over night, still gave a 15 hour estimated time and, in the morning, I woke up to a blinking ? Folder.



I know that it should not be taking this long to install the OS X and I've ruled out the internet connection being the issue. I have a bootable USB with Yosemite on it but the computer does not recognize that when you boot with the option key...it ends up pushing you back to internet recovery.



I have absolutely no idea what to do next. Any ideas?
 
Are you connecting to the web via wifi or ethernet cable? Go ethernet if at all possible.
Are you seeing the SSD when you boot with the Option key or if you go to Disk Utility from Internet Recovery after you get the flashing question mark?).
Did you reset PRAM at any point?
 
@ApfelKuchen Yeah, I've had it hooked up via Wifi and ethernet. I do not see any boot drive when I boot with the Option key. I do see the SSD in Disk Utility which is where I formatted and partitioned it. I have reset the PRAM as well. Do you have any experience with a faulty SATA cable? Would that be consistent with something like this?
 
mattridgely said:
@ApfelKuchen Yeah, I've had it hooked up via Wifi and ethernet. I do not see any boot drive when I boot with the Option key. I do see the SSD in Disk Utility which is where I formatted and partitioned it. I have reset the PRAM as well. Do you have any experience with a faulty SATA cable? Would that be consistent with something like this?
Click to expand...
One further question... well, three: When did you try the PRAM reset? Was it before or after replacing the HDD? Before or after trying to install OS X on the SSD?

A bad SATA cable is certainly one of the key possibilities (PRAM was one of the others, which is why I asked). You've had more than one drive connected to that cable/connector, yet both drives exhibit some common symptoms (yet some symptoms differ). Any component involved in drive input/output is suspect, but connectors and cables are far less reliable than chips.

Here's the thing (am I channeling Monk?)... You said you didn't see the old HDD in Disk Utility, but the new SSD is visible and could be formatted. It opens the possibility that the cable won't be the fix either.

An external USB enclosure can show whether those drives are good (the old drive with a potentially bootable OS, and the new one, if you can then successfully install a bootable copy of OS X on it). It will not prove that the SATA cable is at fault. Only testing/replacing the cable assembly will do that.

Even something as simple as when you tried the PRAM reset can have a remarkable impact on the interpretation of events. If you replaced the HDD before resetting PRAM, we don't know if PRAM alone might have fixed the original problem. Opening the case and replacing the HDD opens the possibility that damage was done by that repair. So, maybe the new SSD is misbehaving for the same reason as the HDD, or maybe not.
 
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