How do I downgrade mountain lion back to my mac mini 2011 lion server

Question

Level 1

0 points

How do I downgrade mountain lion back to my mac mini 2011 lion server

Hi,

Previously, my mac mini mid 2011 was installed with mac os lion server then I have purchase and upgrade to mountain lion via iTunes.

Somehow I decided to downgrade back to lion server due to use of my mac as server, unfortunately I have no idea how to downgrade with the following reasons:

1. I don't create any time machine backup before so can't use that option.

2. I have enable vault function so now the startup has hide the recovery HD icon

3. In the Recovery mode (command + R), I only see an option to download and reinstall a fresh Mountain Lion only.

4. I can't download and install Lion server from iTunes because this os was bundle with purchase of mac mini 2011 mid version.

Any comments and helps here are appreciated. Thanks.

Mac mini Server (Mid 2011), OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.4)

Posted on Jul 6, 2013 10:50 PM

Reply

Answer 1

Herojig

Level 1

5 points

Jul 6, 2013 11:15 PM in response to yplow98

Well, did you save a Carbon Copy Clone (http://www.bombich.com) of the Lion installation by chance? That would be the easiest to go back to and use / update. Outside of that, or having saved the original Lion installer, I know of no way to get the OS that you are after. For future referece, on a mac mini with two harddrives, I have always made a backup partition on the second drive using CCC, and schedule clone updates to that. You can't rely on TM, inmo, so something like CCC or SuperDuper is essential. Cheers,

jigs

Reply

Answer 2

Jul 6, 2013 11:18 PM in response to Herojig

Crap, was under the wrong apple id in the last post... this is me 😁

Reply

Answer 3

yplow98 Author

Level 1

0 points

Jul 6, 2013 11:35 PM in response to Herojig

Hi, thanks for the reply, unfornately I didn't make/save any backup or CCC before.

Yeah, I have 2 harddisks installed in my mac (256SSD and 750GB SATA) and I can see there's partition "Recovery HD" sitting in my 256SSD harddisk but somehow It don't show up from the recovery mode though. Thanks

Reply

Answer 4

Jul 6, 2013 11:41 PM in response to yplow98

Well, you might try this:

1) download CCC and get a fresh drive and clone what you have.

2) that will create a new recovery partition on the clone, so you can boot from that new recovery partition (perhaps).

Not sure what the recovery partition will do for you if you already upgraded to ML however. That recovery instance won't let you go back to Lion... and in fact, outside of using the recovery partition to run Disk Utility, I find it useless. I've tried to do a full recovery of the OS, and it's always failed.

Reply