Install fail, 2012 Mac Mini w/ Crucial 2tb

[gh1989]

Popped in a newly initialised (MacOS Extended) Crucial 2tb drive into my Mac Mini today and decided to do a clean install. I then booted from HS USB Boot drive, and wiped the Crucial drive into APFS (I was unaware it would do it as part of the install process). It began to install, got to the end of the 8 minutes, right at the end of the bar and then went blank and hung with a blank screen. So I restarted and took out the USB boot drive, and now it shows a folder with a question mark, which suggests the computer can't find the OS.

Is it possible that the new SSD could be marked as non-bootable somehow? You used to go into Disk Util or something and mark which drive you wanted to boot from. I assumed since a) it was installing a new OS, and b) there is only one drive, that it would boot from that drive.

I just booted into recovery mode and I'm on the Mountain Lion recovery screen. Any suggestions?

 

[LarryJoe33]

Do you have a clone of your prior OS installation? I personally would reload or boot to that image and start over.

 

[gh1989]

Yeah I guess I can put the old drive into an external. So boot to that, then what? Download the OS from internet, then install on SSD?

 

[LarryJoe33]

Yes, there are lots of ways to go about what you are trying to accomplish and my suggestion is certainly time consuming, but it should be straight forward. You could also copy the old drive over to the new drive using CCC5 and then boot to it and upgrade. The installer will see your boot drive as the install drive so you don't have to worry about choosing the location.

 

[gh1989]

I did an internet restore to Mountain Lion then made sure it booted okay. Then booted via USB into High Sierra, and after the install it now works fine.

Not sure what the problem was, but I suspect it was user error. I think my external monitor, when doing the install showed itself to be "blank" but the system was still working. What in fact was occurring should/might otherwise have a progress bar that was absent when it moved from the UI install to the next stage.

Case closed.
[doublepost=1506484752][/doublepost]

Yes, there are lots of ways to go about what you are trying to accomplish

And thanks for your help