Suddenly blank SSD

[Terry Corder]

Apologies for the long post but I've tried to list all the details I can.


MY MAC


Apple Mac mini "Core i5" 1.4 (Late 2014) Running El Capitan





THE PLAN


I need to use Photoshop, Illustrator and Indesign CS5 so I’m stuck with El Capitan or possibly Sierra. However, all the web browsers I have installed, Safari, Firefox and Chrome are now out of date and will not let me access quite a few web sites. I’ve tried other browsers and they won’t either. So the plan is to have a dual boot Mac.





I’ve bought an OWC MERCURY ELITE PRO MINI HARD DRIVE HOUSING AND A SAMSUNG 860 QVO SSD drive. This combination was supposed to use a Thunderbolt 2 port but there seems to be no such thing as a Thunderbolt 2 to USB 3.1 cable so I’ve used one of the USB 3 ports on the mini and powered the case from an external USB hub, there didn’t seem enough power from just the USB 3 port. This worked.





I cloned the Mini hard drive to the the external SSD drive and updated the OS to Big Surr and it worked. Dual boot Mac Mini. Hooray!!!





THE PROBLEM


This worked well for a few times starting from either the internal or external drive. Yesterday, when I tried to switch from the internal to the external drive, the external SSD drive had disappeared. When I eventually found it again in disk utility it was blank. Everything had disappeared.





I reformatted the SSD and again loaded Big Surr. All good so far. I then copied the internal hard drive to the SSD and all was good although it wouldn’t let me set up my email accounts in Mail. I’ll do it later I thought.





I switched back to the the internal drive running El Capitan as I had work to do. When I went to switch back to Big Surr, the SSD was blank again.





Any idea what’s going on?





I’ve run the consul and ‘CleanMyMacHelperTool’ appears to appear frequently, I did have cleanmymac installed a few years ago but got rid of it and searching everywhere, it doesn’t exist on my Mini.





HELP!!!!

 

[TonyAguila]

Is the external SSD formatted as HFS+ or APFS? Big Sur does not work well with HFS+. If you are going to reformat the SSD, try doing it from Recovery. I don’t think Disk Utility in El Capitan has APFS. If memory serves me right, I think it was introduced with Sierra—what a disaster. Recovery should have the newest version of Disk Utility.

 

[Terry Corder]

Thanks for that and sorry for the slow reply but I've been trying your suggestion and it hasn't worked. Formatted the SSD in recovery mode and installed Big Sur and all was good. Switched back to El Capitan and the SSD is blank again. Any suggestions?

 

[TonyAguila]

Thanks for that and sorry for the slow reply but I've been trying your suggestion and it hasn't worked. Formatted the SSD in recovery mode and installed Big Sur and all was good. Switched back to El Capitan and the SSD is blank again. Any suggestions?

Terry, now it makes sense. When you reformatted in Recovery, it was formatted as APFS, which El Capitan does not understand. If you need to work in El Capitan, you need HFS+, which you still can in Recovery, I think… Otherwise, you may have to erase it from El Capitan’s Disk Utility. As far as Big Sur’s behavior in HFS+ goes, I’m not sure. Never tried it.

 

[Terry Corder]

Why can't things be simple and just work, that's why I use macs in the first place. Thinking aloud here, What if I clone my internal hard drive, El Capitan, to the SSD and then install Big Sur on internal hard drive, I wonder if that will work?