Chosen Solution
I would like to use the hard drive of a Mac Pro as a main Hard drive connected to a Mac Air 13”. I’ve placed the hard drive into an external enclosure and connected to the laptop, the hard drive boots, the laptop sees the hard disk, the grey screen with Apple logo shows but then the hard drive stops spinning. The hard drive is connected to a power supply. Am I expecting too much from the laptop? I’m using a USB cable. Thank you
Its not that its too much but that hard drive (mainly due to software limitations) is not really built to work as an external drive. You might have some more luck using this guide to turning it into an external drive but it may not be possible. Try reformatting the drive completely as well to remove all Apple restraining software.
From a performance perspective I wouldn’t use an external HDD as my boot drive as between the limits of the USB I/O and the drive its not very fast. I would stick with using the MacBook Air’s internal SSD as the boot drive and then use the external as the data drive. As far as your old Mac Pro’s HDD did you run any diagnostics on it to make sure its still able to be used? These older drives are likely not as reliable as a newer one or even going to a SSD if you want something that’s more portable. Maybe this drive would be better served as your TimeMachine backup drive you leave at home.
