Mac Mini OSX Yosemite Boot up problem.

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Mac Mini OSX Yosemite Boot up problem.

So. I recently got a Mac mini late 2012 refurbished. I have had it for a number of weeks and no problems. It is running osx Yosemite and has been working fine until today. When I went to turn on my mac it was loading abnormally slow. I shrugged it off but when I came back a number of minutes later it had turned itself off.i tried to boot it up multiple times but it always gets stuck at about 50% and then closes itself down. Ive tried multiple ways of getting it to work. E.g resetting the NVRAM and the SMC. Running in safe mode which is impossible because I have a usb keyboard and when I press the shift key it doesn't get through quick enough. however I think I know what the problem is. I went into disk utility in recovery mode and tried to repair untitled which is my startup disk but unfortunately it says that it is corrupt and doesn't work and that I should back up as much files as I can etc. Please help I'm really scared that it is broken and I need help. Thank you.

Mac mini, OS X Yosemite (10.10.4), null

Posted on Jul 31, 2015 5:18 PM

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Answer 1

Lanny

Level 6

13,183 points

Jul 31, 2015 5:37 PM in response to Jellyninja12

Sounds like a failing hard drive. Is it under warranty? Do you have a Backup?

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Answer 2

Aug 1, 2015 2:59 AM in response to Jellyninja12

It may be that there are a few corrupt sectors on the drive.

I had a similar issue with a 2010 Mini about a year after

I purchased it. Fortunately, I had an external clone I could

boot from.

What I needed to was to boot to the clone and reformat the

internal drive to a single partition and under the options set it to

write zeroes to the drive. What this does is to wipe the drive totally

clean and also to map out bad sectors as not available for use

(even a brand new drive has bad sectors, but the manufacturer

built the map table to map them out). After doing this, copied the clone

back to the internal drive.

This Mini has since been running flawlessly and is still in use as my

home server (almost 5 years now).

So the drive in itself may be okay, unfortunately the fix wipes out anything

on the drive, so if you don't have any backups, your hosed.

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Answer 3

Jellyninja12 Author

Level 1

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Aug 1, 2015 4:00 AM in response to woodmeister50

I Have multiple time machine backups so they could work but I've come across a new problem. My mac isn't responding to my keyboard. usually to check my keyboard is on I would press the caps lock and if it lit up it is on. Now the caps lock doesn't light up. I would go into my usb devices in the top bar of my mac but I can't even boot it up to check.

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Answer 4

lllaass

Level 10

210,411 points

Aug 1, 2015 6:31 AM in response to Jellyninja12

- If you are connecting the KB directly to the Mac, like not through an extension cable or hub that woud point to either a hardware problem with the Mac or bad KB

- Make sure that all peripherals except KB and monitor are disconnected

- Trey another KB

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Answer 5

Jellyninja12 Author

Level 1

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Aug 1, 2015 9:00 AM in response to lllaass

I Managed to get a working keyboard. I went on recovery mode and I am now restoring my mac from a time machine backup. Is this the right thing to do? Will this fix my boot problem?

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Answer 6

lllaass

Level 10

210,411 points

Aug 1, 2015 9:12 AM in response to Jellyninja12

Likely restoring from TM will resolve the problem. You will find out when you use the Mac after the restore.

Only concern is if the HD is failing. Did you format the HD before restoring?

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Answer 7

Jellyninja12 Author

Level 1

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Aug 1, 2015 1:12 PM in response to lllaass

TThe time machine backup fixed it. I was so worried that my mac was broken. I'm going to give it a rest now because its been on for 5 hours straight doing the time machine backup. My HD is intact by the way. Thank You! 😎

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