unable to boot mac mini

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unable to boot mac mini

I am trying to help a friend get his 2012 Mac Mini up and running. As it is, it will not boot from it's internal hard drive, or a 10.8 image from either a CD or a thumb drive. It will boot in recovery mode, and I have tried and failed several times to use disk utility to repair the hard drive. It has given me the option to reformat the drive, but I don't want to do that until I have exhausted all other options. Unfortunately, my friend did not back up any of his data, so it will all be lost if I do that.

So a few questions. I don't know what system he was running, because I've never seen the system when it was healthy. Apple's website says that this Mac will run 10.8. Is that the case, or should I be trying something newer? There used to be a mode called 'usb disk mode', which would allow me to essentially use a mac as an external hard drive, so data could be recovered that way. Finally, is there any way that the files could be recovered while the system is in recovery mode? There is an option to restore from Time Machine. Is there a way to back up to time machine from in recovery mode? I know I should be able to pull the drive and put in in an external USB box, but that will probably be the last thing to try.

Posted on May 28, 2019 3:33 PM

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Answer 1

May 30, 2019 3:27 AM in response to HWTech

Targeted disk mode worked. Apparently, the Mini has a lot of issues. I can read from it's drive but am unable to write to it. I am rescuing what files that I can. I do have a 10.8 boot disk, but for some reason, the mini refused to boot from it. It was listed as a boot option, both as a CD and a thumb drive, but when I tried to boot from it, the screen showed a greyed-out 'X'. There might be more serious issues than a bad hard drive / corrupted OS.

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Answer 2

May 30, 2019 1:59 PM in response to AntonyFromWatertown

See my previous post here on how to create a bootable Knoppix Linux USB drive to check the health of the Mini's hard drive.

Assuming the hard drive is healthy, is the Mini's hard drive FileVaulted? I don't know if you can install OSX if you just unlock the FileVault. You may need to disable FileVault first. I just always erase the physical drive as it is quicker plus it recreates the partitions & file systems just to be safe. I'm doubtful if Disk Utility will allow you to erase the physical drive from a local Recovery Mode since you are booting from the local hard drive. You may need to create a bootable OSX USB installer in order to erase the physical drive. I believe with Mountain Lion, to really erase the physical drive it is best to use the Partition tab and select "1 Partition" from the drop down list and using "HFS+ (Journaled)".

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Answer 3

May 30, 2019 12:31 PM in response to HWTech

Another issue. I'm trying to install Sierra from within recovery mode. The only disk that is available is labeled 'Recovery HD'. It is only 650 MB, and it is locked, so it won't let me make any changes. Does this mean that the drive on the Mini is toast? I was able to recover my friend's main directory, as well as their application directory.

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Answer 4

May 30, 2019 3:44 PM in response to HWTech

Thanks. I wasn't even thinking about an encrypted drive. I erased the drive, and now it looks like it's installing. When I re-install the files, are they going to be recognized as his, or will there be permissions issues?

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Answer 5

May 30, 2019 7:50 PM in response to AntonyFromWatertown

I don't believe you should have any permissions issues transferring the documents to the clean system. If you have any issues, then just update this thread.

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Answer 6

May 28, 2019 5:18 PM in response to AntonyFromWatertown

You can use Target Disk Mode to make the Mini appear as an external drive when connected to another computer. If you know how to use the command line, then you can use the Terminal app in Recovery Mode to transfer files.

You may want to check the health of the hard drive before doing too much to it. If the drive happens to be failing, then you want to minimize its use until you recover the data from it. Since you do not have an OSX boot disk, you can instead check the hard drive's health by creating a bootable Knoppix Linux USB drive using Etcher (Mac/Windows/Linux). Option Boot the Knoppix USB drive and select the orange icon labeled "EFI". Once you reach the Knoppix desktop, click on the "Start" menu in the lower left of the Taskbar and navigate to "System Tools --> GSmartControl". Double-click on the Mini's drive in GSmartControl and check its status. If it reports as healthy, you may post a screenshot or picture of all of the SMART Attributes shown on the "Attributes" tab in GSmartControl. Also check if the "Error Log" tab shows any items.

Depending on the version of OSX being used on the Mini, Knoppix may be able to mount the drive and allow you to transfer the files to an ExFAT or NTFS volume or network share. To see if Knoppix can easily mount the Mini's drive, open a file explorer (the icon which looks like a file cabinet on the left side of the Taskbar). If you do not see a "Macintosh HD" option in the left pane of the file explorer, then just click on each item to see if one of them is the Mini's drive (most likely will be "sda2"). If you can mount the drive this way, then post back and I will provide instructions on how you get the necessary permissions to copy the files from the Users folder using the file explorer GUI.

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unable to boot mac mini

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