Installing SSD boot drive in Mac Mini, while keeping old HDD and transferring drive name/path to SSD

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Level 1

17 points

Installing SSD boot drive in Mac Mini, while keeping old HDD and transferring drive name/path to SSD

I currently have a 2014 Mac Mini with the 1TB HDD which is failing. I can boot into Recovery and Safe modes, but if I try a normal boot, it fails 70% through and powers down. I do not have a Time Machine backup (this was a media server, mostly), but there are some files on it I will want to recover from it if possible.

I am adding a new, internal PCIE drive which will become the boot drive on which I'll do a clean install. I can't easily uninstall the current HDD. My plan, after recovering files, will be to reformat the HDD drive from scratch and see if it can become useful again. If not, it will just be sitting there.

I'm hoping to name the SSD drive the same as the failed boot drive in order to preserve any original paths to my restored files, so my plan is this.

Boot my machine in recovery mode
Go into Disk Utility and rename the failing HDD
Have the Install MacOS High Sierra.app on a thumb drive, and invoke it from the Recovery Mode menu
Specify the PCIE drive as my boot drive and give it the same name as the old boot drive

Does that make sense? Any risks?

Mac mini, macOS 10.12

Posted on Apr 2, 2020 10:21 AM

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Answer 1

HWTech

Level 9

60,176 points

Apr 2, 2020 6:25 PM in response to mgincnj

If the hard drive is failing you need to proceed carefully. You should first determine the condition of the drive and if it is failing, then how bad is the failure? If you attempt to copy data from a failing hard drive it can make the drive failure much worse very quickly since macOS and most data recovery apps cannot handle the hardware errors a failing drive produces.

If it were my system I would create a bootable Knoppix Linux USB drive using Etcher (Mac/Windows/Linux). Option Boot the USB drive and select the orange icon labeled "EFI". While Knoppix is booting the system may appear frozen on the Apple boot picker menu so make sure to give Knoppix lots of time to finish booting.

Once Knoppix boots to the desktop click on the "Start" menu located in the lower left corner of the Taskbar and navigate to "System Tools --> GSmartControl". Within the GSmartControl app double-click on the Mini's drive icon to access the hard drive's health information. Post the complete report here and I will review it for you.

If the drive failure isn't too severe, then I would try using Carbon Copy Cloner to make an image of the user account(s). I wouldn't image the whole drive since you know the system isn't booting which likely means some system files are damaged. You may be able to migrate the user accounts from the failing drive using Setup Assistant on the clean macOS install on the new SSD, but if it takes too long or produces too many errors you should stop it immediately as you are likely causing irreversible data loss.

If the drive failure is more severe, then the best way to recover the data is by performing a bit for bit clone of the drive. This requires another drive of equal or larger size to hold the temporary clone.

Of course using a professional data recovery service such as Drive Savers or Ontrack is the safest way of recovering data from a failing hard drive. Both vendors provide free estimates and both are recommended by Apple.

You need to choose wisely since you may only get one chance at recovering data from a failing hard drive.

FYI, I have successfully recovered data from hundreds of failing drives. Some of the drives were in such bad condition I didn't expect to be able to retrieve anything from them. I do greatly err on the side of caution when I perform data recovery.

You definitely want to have good verified working backups when using an SSD since data recovery from an SSD is nearly impossible. SSDs can fail at any time without any warning signs.

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Answer 2

mgincnj Author

Level 1

17 points

Apr 4, 2020 9:56 AM in response to BDAqua

Hey, BD. I haven't tried it yet. But I have gone through the SSD replacement. I learned a few things in the process:

The OS had sort of cordoned off the old hdd. I tried changing its name from the disk utility in Recovery Mode before I installed the new SSD, and it seemed to allow it. But when I rebooted into recovery mode, it was still named Macintosh HD.
I then went ahead and installed the PCIE SSD, and that went easily. Surprisingly, it allowed me to change the name of the new boot drive to Macintosh HD, even though the old drive is still visible in the finder, also named Macintosh HD. I have read only access to it, and will try copying the Plex server files over when I have time. I assume, if the finder copy routine doesn't work, I could run CCC from the boot drive, and access the old HDD while it's still running. BTW, I still can't change the old HDD's name even when booted normally from the new version.
The OS gives me a warning to reformat the old HDD. I will do that after I try copying stuff over. I doubt I can trust the drive any longer any, so the main reason to reformat will be to change the name and eliminate the warning.
The whole business with High Sierra so I could run Office 2011 turned out to be a waste of time. Microsoft no longer runs the activation server, or supports phone activation, for 2011. So I'm out of luck there.

Thanks for your help. I really appreciate folks like yourself who take time to provide some guidance.

Regards,

Michael

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Answer 3

BDAqua

Level 10

245,027 points

Apr 4, 2020 10:31 AM in response to mgincnj

OK, don't worry about changing the name of the old drive Michael.

I wouldn't trust the HDD either, & on Office...

Look into the Free LibreOffice, it handles MS Office files…

https://www.libreoffice.org/

Apple macOS (Mac OS X)

The software and hardware prerequisites for installing on a Apple macOS computer are as follows:

LibreOffice 6.3.x: macOS 10.10 (Yosemite) or higher
LibreOffice 6.2.x: macOS 10.9 (Mavericks) or higher
Intel processor
512 MB RAM
Up to 800 MB available hard disk space
1024x768 graphic device with 256 colors (higher resolution recommended)

It is a recommended best practice to back-up your system and data before you remove or install software.

Notes:

For certain features of the software - but not most - Java is required. Java is notably required for Base.
Due to an issue, there are the following restrictions with Java: on macOS 10.10 and newer, JRE isn't found, JDK is required
LibreOffice 4.3 can still run on OS X 10.6+, but please understand that this support ended when 4.3 was retired on May 27, 2015.

https://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/system-requirements/#Apple

Feature Comparison of LibreOffice v6.4 with Office 365/Office 2019 for Mac

https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Feature_Comparison:_LibreOffice_-_Microsoft_Office

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Answer 4

mgincnj Author

Level 1

17 points

Apr 3, 2020 7:15 AM in response to HWTech

HW & BD....

Thanks for responding.

Recovering the existing files on the failing hard drive is a secondary issue for me. This Mac Mini was used principally as a PLEX media server. The media files themselves are on an external hard drive that is fully backed up and functioning perfectly. I'm trying only to recover the Plex server files, to preserve the metadata. If I have to regenerate it, that would be annoying but not fatal.

The old HDD was booting fine until recently. When I ran First Aid from the Disk Utility, it told me there were errors and to run it again in recovery mode. It then failed to fix the errors, returning error 8. From then on it wouldn't boot except to recovery mode. I'm expecting that if I can boot the machine from the new drive, I will be able to copy the Plex server files using the finder, or possibly a more powerful utility that I would run from the new drive. After that, I'm happy to never use the HDD ever again.

However, that is the reason I'm trying to preserve the path on the boot drive to be identical to the current HDD. Assuming I'm successful copying over the Plex directories, I expect it's filled with absolute links to resources on the boot drive. With luck, if I copy everything successfully, I'm hoping I can just fire up Plex and it will find the external media and its local metadata, and just work.

Given all that background, do you have any comments on the 4-step plan I laid out?

Regards,

Michael

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Answer 5

mgincnj Author

Level 1

17 points

Apr 4, 2020 1:55 PM in response to BDAqua

Hey, BD, thanks for the tip on LibreOffice.

This instance of office is to allow my wife to continue working on a Mac (her MacBook Air just gave up the ghost). She HATES CHANGE (not a techie). A key feature of LibreOffice is that you can open and save office files without "exporting" them. And I realized that the UI on LibreOffice is probably closer to 2011 Office on the Mac than the current MS Office versions.

For years I used to keep a copy of Open Office on my Mac, because it was the only way to ensure you got a UTF-8 encoded CSV file from a spreadsheet. But the UI was pretty clunky, and I never considered it usable for real work as long as I had Office around. My brief impression is that this is much better.

Thanks, again!

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Answer 6

mgincnj Author

Level 1

17 points

Apr 5, 2020 5:12 AM in response to BDAqua

You stay safe as well!

Final update, I was in fact able to recover the Plex Server Metadata.

Basically, I made a new install of Plex server on the new SSD. Found where the new install put the Library/Applications/Plex Media Server/ folder and then copied the old folder over this one. Immediately, I got back all of my media files with all of the metadata restored to where I wanted it.

So, overall, I'm declaring this solved. Thanks again for your help.

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