Your Warrior approach steps will work also if you use your USB thumb drive that you created for OS X Mavericks. Last, I completed setup and pointed to my SSD as my Startup Disk. Then I installed the SSD into the MBP, power it up while holding the Option/Alt key and selected the SSD to boot into. After the install completed and rebooted to my SSD and at the setup screen, I powered off the MBP. Then, I went to the App Store and downloaded/installed OS X Mavericks to my SSD. From my OS X Desktop, I opened Disk Utility and formated the SSD.

I plugged in my external enclosure (containing the blank SSD) to my MBP and booted to my internal HDD. Your Safe bet steps are what I did when I installed an SSD in an early-2011 MBP. How am I supposed to get into recovery mode then ? I Googled that and found out that this is normal behaviour on a Mac with a wireless keyboard. I tried to use several keyboard combinason without any luck. I do not want to clone the install I'm running know on my standard HD. Just so you know, what I'm trying to do is a fresh install of Mavericks, from scratch. When you have finished, restart and disconnect your HDD.įirst off, thanks for taking the time to answer. Get a USB to SATA adapter, connect the HDD and follow these steps with Disk Utility > Choose your HDD as 'Source' and the SSD as 'Destination'. In case you want to clone your HDD to the SSD, you can use the Restore feature in Disk Utility to do it. Then, format the SSD with Disk Utility > Finally, close Disk Utility and reinstall OS X. You have to hold the Alt key while your computer is starting up in order to show all bootable partitions, so you will be able to choose the OS X Mavericks installer flash drive.

how will I be able to make a fresh install of Mavericks ? I made a bootable Mavericks install usb stick, but haven't found out a way yet to boot on it (I have a wireless Apple keyboard, and holding the cmd key when booting won't pop any disk manager) If your Mac mini does not start up automatically into Internet Recovery, hold Command, Option (Alt) and R keys while your computer is starting up. This will give you the option to format the SSD and install OS X. Your Mac may not start up or the Mac mini will start up into Internet Recovery. what will happen when I first boot my Mini after I replaced the HDD with the SSD ? As of now, this drive is in stock state, I guess not even formatted and empty.

Owc mac mini ssd install 2011