we are doomed that is the cause of this issue, this caddy is crap, ill get another brand, long story short i have tried the caddy on 2 different machines i got the same issue freezing and I/O errors however i was able to install with the caddy attached though, worth mentioning on my E08 MBP the issue was worse than my E08MB weird!
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New SSD: Yosemite won't install, old drive won't clone
- Thread starter MidnightBarber
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we are doomed that is the cause of this issue, this caddy is crap, ill get another brand, long story short i have tried the caddy on 2 different machines i got the same issue freezing and I/O errors however i was able to install with the caddy attached though, worth mentioning on my E08 MBP the issue was worse than my E08MB weird!
your caddy is the issue take it out and install from usb, i guarantee it would work perfectly
It turns out this wasn't the problem either. I have the SSD in the original drive bay, and the caddy/old drive completely disconnected. Made a bootable Mavericks USB installer, partitioned the SSD with GUID and mac OS journaled (extended) structure, 1 partition. Then I went to install and after a few minutes it says "OS X can't be installed on the disk SSD, because a recovery system can't be created". The log says "Recovery system creation failed with error -69866 (Couldn't complete copy".
It turns out this wasn't the problem either. I have the SSD in the original drive bay, and the caddy/old drive completely disconnected. Made a bootable Mavericks USB installer, partitioned the SSD with GUID and mac OS journaled (extended) structure, 1 partition. Then I went to install and after a few minutes it says "OS X can't be installed on the disk SSD, because a recovery system can't be created". The log says "Recovery system creation failed with error -69866 (Couldn't complete copy".
this seems to be a new issue, do you have an ML CD or another osx installer to tryout?
this seems to be a new issue, do you have an ML CD or another osx installer to tryout?
This error has come up during one or two of my attempts, seemingly at random. I've repartitioned but left 1GB of empty space and I'll try again - After that I'll download the ML installer and put that on USB to try.
This is bizarre.
As for the Windows/OS X difference, it seems to me there isn't actually one. You wrote that after booting OS X from your old drive and formatting the SSD for the first time, read/write worked fine on the SSD. This was the same you observed in Windows.
Then it seems your troubles only begin once you try to install OS X on the SSD.
Is this a correct understanding of your situation?
And as for different versions of OS X, there really shouldn't be a difference between installing Mountain Lion, Mavericks, and Yosemite - all of them should work equally well. That they don't leads me a bit to believe there's a problem with your actual installation medium or procedure for creating it. Do you mind describing your process? If it is not via DiskMaker X to a USB flash drive or SD card, I would suggest you do that. If it is, I would suggest you follow Apple's more tedious steps.
Also, do you have a configuration that you know your MBP works with (perhaps restoring it completely to default hardware)?
And do you have an external hard drive enclosure you know works?
If so, restore your computer to that state, put your SSD into the enclosure, make an OS X installation medium with DiskMaker X (or from Apple's steps), boot from it and then use that to format your SSD and install OS X onto it while connected externally.
If that works, boot from the SSD externally. If everything still works, then install the SSD into your machine and see if that works. If it does, great! If not, you'll know something is up inside your machine (quite possibly with your SATA cable).
Although perhaps cumbersome, this procedure should reduce the amount of sources from which errors can arise and thus give a higher chance of success.
As for the Windows/OS X difference, it seems to me there isn't actually one. You wrote that after booting OS X from your old drive and formatting the SSD for the first time, read/write worked fine on the SSD. This was the same you observed in Windows.
Then it seems your troubles only begin once you try to install OS X on the SSD.
Is this a correct understanding of your situation?
And as for different versions of OS X, there really shouldn't be a difference between installing Mountain Lion, Mavericks, and Yosemite - all of them should work equally well. That they don't leads me a bit to believe there's a problem with your actual installation medium or procedure for creating it. Do you mind describing your process? If it is not via DiskMaker X to a USB flash drive or SD card, I would suggest you do that. If it is, I would suggest you follow Apple's more tedious steps.
Also, do you have a configuration that you know your MBP works with (perhaps restoring it completely to default hardware)?
And do you have an external hard drive enclosure you know works?
If so, restore your computer to that state, put your SSD into the enclosure, make an OS X installation medium with DiskMaker X (or from Apple's steps), boot from it and then use that to format your SSD and install OS X onto it while connected externally.
If that works, boot from the SSD externally. If everything still works, then install the SSD into your machine and see if that works. If it does, great! If not, you'll know something is up inside your machine (quite possibly with your SATA cable).
Although perhaps cumbersome, this procedure should reduce the amount of sources from which errors can arise and thus give a higher chance of success.
You wrote that after booting OS X from your old drive and formatting the SSD for the first time, read/write worked fine on the SSD.
Read/write occasionally work to a degree, but it's completely unpredictable and never works well. When it does, it works slowly for a couple of minutes and then I can no longer write or even partition the drive until I restart again. General strangeness.
That they don't leads me a bit to believe there's a problem with your actual installation medium or procedure for creating it. Do you mind describing your process?
First I tried downloading a new Yosemite installation through recovery mode to the SSD. Then I downloaded Yosemite from the app store and made a bootable flash drive of it (as described here https://support.apple.com/en-is/HT201372). Then I tried doing the same thing but with a small partition of my original hard drive. Then I did all of the above with Mavericks. I also did try DiskMaker but it gave me some weird errors, so I just disregarded that method.
Also, do you have a configuration that you know your MBP works with (perhaps restoring it completely to default hardware)?
And do you have an external hard drive enclosure you know works?
Having the original drive in the optical drive bay works whether or not the SSD is plugged in. If it IS plugged in, it just doesn't do much. This is the configuration I'm currently running.
I have an identical hard drive in another computer - I switched that in and have some other strange but slightly different issues, the common factor being that both SSDs (same model) are unusable in the original drive's spot. I plan test them in the optical drive bay as soon as a small enough screwdriver arrives that I ordered from Amazon since my old one broke. I don't have an enclosure at all - But hopefully if it's SATA cable issues changing its location will help narrow that down. Worked for this guy (https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1213115/) who had a similar MBP and Kingston SDD..
I can also confirm that I don't have the nVidia MCP79 chipset, which others seem to have in 2011 MBP and is incompatible with SSDs that use SandForce (as mine does). So, that should not be an issue. I can also confirm that the drive functions properly, as I cloned an identical one to it at 83% capacity on a Windows PC. The SSD has the newest firmware.
Thanks for all of your thought in this one.. It will be a couple of days before I can test the drive in the optical drive bay.
Last edited:
Solved!
Despite everything else that I've done, and the nature of the strange behaviours I've witnessed, for whatever reason simply putting the SSD into the optical drive bay seems to have done the trick. I'm finalizing the installation of OS X right now, so I assume it will complete without issue at this point.
It really doesn't make a lot of sense, and it will be a reduction in speed (I believe it uses SATA 2 as opposed to the possible 3), but I'm willing to bet it will still be a lot faster than HDD on SATA 3.. So that's good enough for me for the time being.
Thanks everyone for all of your suggestions and help!
Despite everything else that I've done, and the nature of the strange behaviours I've witnessed, for whatever reason simply putting the SSD into the optical drive bay seems to have done the trick. I'm finalizing the installation of OS X right now, so I assume it will complete without issue at this point.
It really doesn't make a lot of sense, and it will be a reduction in speed (I believe it uses SATA 2 as opposed to the possible 3), but I'm willing to bet it will still be a lot faster than HDD on SATA 3.. So that's good enough for me for the time being.
Thanks everyone for all of your suggestions and help!
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