disk doesn't appear in Disk Utility, after going thu. " ? " screen .
Time machine sees my back up drive but cant get into it .
reinstall OS dose not work...no HD available .
mac mini mid 2011... started up now using a light tap on the side of mini case .
Can the HD have a loose connection ?
Will Apple be able to repair this older mini ?
Mac mini, macOS 10.13
Maybe the old disks are bad? If you still can boot the Mac, I'd make a backup of important files, download the latest supported system and make a bootable flash drive(s) from it. Then try to re-surrect the internal drive or replace it with a new SSD.
Maybe the old disks are bad? If you still can boot the Mac, I'd make a backup of important files, download the latest supported system and make a bootable flash drive(s) from it. Then try to re-surrect the internal drive or replace it with a new SSD.
It is possible the hard drive cable has come loose from the Logic Board, but most likely a hard drive is failing. You can try running the Apple Diagnostics to see if it detects any hardware issues, but unfortunately the diagnostics don't detect all drive failures.
If you Mini is using hard drives, then replacing them with an SSD upgrade will give the Mac a nice performance boost. However, Apple does not do drive upgrades. Apple will only replace a drive with the same type of drive if a drive failure is detected.
disk doesn't appear in Disk Utility,
