Boot failure
My Mac Mini has had a hissy fit and won't boot. I've tried Safe mode, system check, resetting the Pram, and Hardware Test, but all I get is a partial boot on a mint/grey striped loading screen before it all goes black. In recovery mode I can get past that to a white screen but then it hangs (it successfully booted the first time I tried that, but then went phut before I could reconnect my external drive to backup recent files - if I could even get that again it would help!)
What else can I try?
NB: The last time I had trouble, five years ago, I wasn't clued up enough to try any of the above. The local Genius Bar replaced my hard drive as a first resort, but then it turned out the problem was the motherboard and I needn't have sacrificed the lost data after all.