I have a mid 2009 macbook pro. 5.43GHz intel core 2 duo. 8gb ram. Running most current version of Lion.
I purchased a Western Digital Scorpio blue 1tb 5400rpm hdd earlier this week planning to upgrade from the original 250gb hdd.
I have been through multiple website forums and help centers asking questions.
I have repaired my original disk with Disk Utility, repaired the permission, both multiple times. I originally tried cloning using Recovery HD, by putting the new drive in and the original in an external enclosure. It failed with an I/O error.
So I moved to Carbon Copy Cloner to try the clone, still the the new hdd in the laptop. It took almost 50 hours to copy 120gb. It would take ~20 minutes to transfer 1gb from the source to the destination (I measure with a single file). When it was finally finished I could choose to boot to the drive but it would not work. It would show the apple logo then show a circle with a slash on boot and boot to the original still attached in the external.
I tried something else, I switched the disks, so the original source was back in the laptop and the new destination was in the external enclosure. Reformatted, verified, repaired, everything. This time it transferred that same 1gb file from the source to the destination in ~25 seconds. I cloned everything again, it completed 120gb in a little over an hour. When trying to boot, it worked. It booted to the new hdd while it was in the external enclosure.
So, switched the disks again and the disk will not boot.
Currently I wiped the drive again and used Recovery HD to install a fresh version of Lion to the disk while it was in the laptop. It installed, but when I tried to boot to the drive to finish installation it would not boot, showing the circle with the slash after the apply logo.
So I have again switched the disks, it booted to the new disk and it let me finishing the install of Lion. I am now running a fresh Lion while the disk is in the external enclosure.
But of course, I have again switched the drives and tried to boot to the brand new lion on the disk from inside the laptop and it will not boot. It shows the apple logo then the circle with the slash in it then boot to the original disk that is attached externally.
Why does this hard drive have extremely slow transfer rates and the inability to boot while it is in the laptop?
Why will this disk not boot from inside the laptop but it will from outside?
What does the circle with the slash mean at startup?
