Mac Mini (late 2014) SSD upgrade - not bootable

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Mac Mini (late 2014) SSD upgrade - not bootable

Hi all - hoping someone can help.

Mac mini (late 2014 model).

It came with a Fusion drive, but the PCI SSD seems to have gone faulty, so I have decided to upgrade and replaced the mechanical HD with a Samsung 870 EVO SSD (ive just left the original PCI SSD in there).

Booted to recovery mode - showing my new SSD perfectly in Disk Utility, so formatted as APFS and started the Mojave installation.

Restarts as part of the install process and then displays the "?" - no boot disk error.

Restarted recovery mode, erased and reformatted as Mac OX (journaled) but exact same problem is happening.

From boot manager, no disks are coming up as available - but the SSD is clearly visible in dIsk Manager.

Any help very much appreciated as I don't know what to do next.

Would trying a recovery install to the original OSX version make any difference rather than going straight for Mojave??

Mac mini

Posted on Feb 24, 2023 06:54 AM

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Answer 1

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bsharp77 Author

Level 1

5 points

Feb 27, 2023 01:15 AM in response to bsharp77

Just to update - when starting the internet recovery, it tried to install Ventura (not Mojave as stated - sorry).

Further reading suggests Ventura is not compatible with my Mac mini, so not sure why it even attempted it.

A restart and internet recovery (using the shift key) to install the original El Capitan has proved to be successful and i'm now in the process of updating to Monterey.

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Answer 2

den.thed

Level 10

88,960 points

Feb 27, 2023 08:00 AM in response to bsharp77

No problem.

That is correct. Monterey is fastest macOS a 2014 Mac mini can run.

You may need to go from El Capitan to High Sierra and then from High Sierra to Monterey.

How to download macOS - Apple Support

Because High Sierra was the pivot point when the drive format changed from Mac OS Extended (Journaled) to APFS.

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Answer 3

bsharp77 Author

Level 1

5 points

Feb 27, 2023 08:01 AM in response to den.thed

Ha! Funny you should say that - I loaded the Monterey installer from El Capitan and now seem to be stuck in a rebooting install loop - I will have to start again and do as you instructed.

Thanks for the tip!

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