SSD install not working out...

[manouchehr]

Hi all,

After upgrading 2 MBPs to SSD and upgrading my mac mini's ram I figured I would install an SSD in the mini mid 2010 as well. Followed the ifixit procedure and things seem to go smoothly. I did notice the sata connectors to the optical drive and the SSD were a bit loose and come undone easily. I pushed them in as securely as I dared.

The Mini now doesn't power up. No light, no fan spinning, no drive sounds. Tore the thing down again, and just could not get it to power on again, until I deliberately disconnected the optical drive. It powers up, I can get to disk utilities, but the SSD cannot be found.

replaced the ssd with the original drive, and again the only way to get it to power on is to not have the optical sata connector connected. Unfortunately it now also cannot find the original HDD using disk utilities....


Any suggestions. Have I damaged the sata connectors?

Any help much appreciated

regards
Manouchehr

 

[Darmok N Jalad]

Sounds like you may have damaged a cable. They could be pretty fragile after so many years. Might be worth it to order a new set and see what happens. It might be the cable was already going bad and that's why the SSD wasn't working well.

 

[treekram]

I would agree with post #2 - probably a short someplace in the connector on the cable or the cable itself. As for not finding the HDD or SSD connected to the HDD cable, it might be coincidence but it is troubling that both now do not work. On one of the cables sold on Amazon, there was a review which stated that the new cable was causing the same type of problem - when attached the Mini doesn't power up, disconnect it and it works so you're not the only one although for people replacing the HDD's in the 2011, 2012 and 2014 Mini's, I haven't seen this problem on this forum.

If you can replace the cables, hopefully it'll work - if it doesn't, there could be quite a bit work/expense ahead.

 

[manouchehr]

Thanks for the quick replies. Opened her up again and verified there is no visual damage to any connectors and cables I could see.
I am bringing the mini in for repair. Will post the findings.

Best regards

 

[manouchehr]

well, turned out the sata cable was broken. a new one was installed and all is well. (almost all...after installing High Sierra and using migration assistant the icon for the adobe lightroom app has turned into some generic icon, no big deal really, but obviously I cannot leave well enough alone so will tinker with it some more...)

 

[Partron22]

Thanks. I'd just found a forgotten 250GB SSD from my Lenovo, and was about to attempt this exact surgery.
I do not feel like playing brittle cable bingo, so I'll try slapping the SSD in a firewire case and see if I can get a speed up that way. It'd be awful to have to buy another mini right now. In the same time since the last refresh, I went from a Macintosh 128k to a IIci (8->25GHz, lots more memory). The value is just not there.

Results:
Copied boot drive over to SSD. The Mac (mini mid 2010) is running El Capitan 10.11.6.

Boot time (bong, til last menubar icon appears) off ext Firewire 800 is 127 seconds (normal boot)
Boot time off SSD via USB 2 is 87 seconds.
Boot time off SSD in Firewire 800 enclosure is 68 seconds.

Thus Boot speeds up by a factor of 1.9. using the Firewire enclosure.
Looking at a few Apps, it looks like they're feeling the change too.

-Likely not as good a result as I'd get by full surgery, but Far safer than messing with brittle old wires. The change is worth it if all you've got is old USB2 cases. Firewire 800 makes it better.