[Uncle Skeleton]

Ok so I was trying out carbon copy cloner, and I told it to clone a bootable external drive over to my mac mini. I think the setting was to replace all files, but not wipe the target drive first. Well it took about 13 hours, then it said it was done, so I tried to reboot on the newly cloned drive.

Now the mini gives the startup chime, the gray screen with the apple logo, and the spinning dots progress indicator, but gets no further. It just spins and spins forever. It doesn't respond to any startup key presses I know of (cmd-v, cmd-s, option, T, cmd-opt-p-r, or holding the mouse button down (there's a data DVD in the drive I also can't get out now)).

What in the name of the holy dog cow can I try next?

[seanc]

So you've cloned an external drive to your Minis internal drive, I assume overwriting all data in the process.
Are you using an Apple keyboard and mouse or something else?
You could try an archive and install.
Do you need to recover data?

[Uncle Skeleton]

It's an apple keyboard but non-apple mouse. I don't need to recover data, and I would be perfectly happy to wipe the drive or archive and install. But how do I do that, since I can't boot it, and I can't mount it in target disk mode, and even if I void the warranty and remove the hard drive I have nowhere to mount it as a second (I have a pismo, which presumably would be no better off than the mini). Suggestions?

[Cold Warrior]

Try holding down eject at startup. It may work when the mouse button doesn't.

[seanc]

If you unplug the non-apple mouse does the keyboard start responding to input at startup? Give an Apple mouse a whirl to see if it makes any difference to holding the mouse button down to eject the disc.

Unfortunately the Pismo will be of no use because it's PATA and the Mini is SATA.

[Uncle Skeleton]

I got an apple mouse on there and tried cmd-s and holding the mouse button, nothing changed. Do you know if it matters whether you start holding these buttons before or after the power button is pressed or the startup chime sounds? Also, should I see a response before the Apple logo and progress (non)indicator? I imagine for things like target disk mode and choosing a startup device it would do those before the progress indicator starts, but I can't remember now.

Edit: holding keys starting from before pressing the power button works on the display models, and doing so with verbose mode will never see the apple logo, if it's going to work.

[seanc]

You should be holding buttons and doing commands directly after the Apple chime. Target disk mode would kick in before the OS X loading screen.

[Uncle Skeleton]

I just tried taking it to the Apple retail store, and the genius bar fellow did exactly the same things I tried, but darned if it didn't work for him :-/ ...
Maybe simply leaving it unplugged for a while was needed, like an extreme power-cycling.

Thanks for your help, seanc

[chipchen]

sometimes bootable clones don't always work like a charm. I've had several drives (cloned using CCC, restore through Disk Utility, or manually by terminal commands) not work on first attempt at boot. Some work after a few attempts... and a few never do and require re-installs.

Anyway, just my two cents.