2011 Mac Mini wont boot up. Need Help.

[vim147]

I have a 2011 Mac Mini which doesn't want to boot up anymore. It gets to the screen below then it just shuts down.

I tried to start in safe mode but it doesn't even get to that unless am doing it wrong.
Am running High Sierra with a 1TB HDD main drive. I have approximately 3500 music albums with a few 100's of films on it without back up that i really don't want to lose.

Prior to all this, the Mac Mini was running abit slow so I'd rebooted it and now run into this problem.

I took the HDD out and put it in a external enclosure and plugged it into a Linux Mint computer, It did let me view the main folders but but not my media folders saying that i don't have permission.

Can anyone help ????

 

[Fishrrman]

I can't address what's wrong with the 2011 Mini.

However...
If you decide that now is the time for a new Mac, you can still "take the old drive" along and access stuff on it.


I'd suggest that after you unbox the new Mac, that you connect the drive BEFORE you press the power-on button for the first time.

Then, at the appropriate time, try accessing the drive using setup assistant.

Setup assistant may be able to "bring everything over" to the new Mac -- or at least, your account(s), data files, etc.

Just wondering...
Can you re-assemble the Mini?
What happens if you try booting to INTERNET RECOVERY (this IS NOT the same as "the recovery partition")?
Command-OPTION-R
at boot.

Does it work?
Will the internet utilities load?

 

[vim147]

I can't address what's wrong with the 2011 Mini.

However...
If you decide that now is the time for a new Mac, you can still "take the old drive" along and access stuff on it.


I'd suggest that after you unbox the new Mac, that you connect the drive BEFORE you press the power-on button for the first time.

Then, at the appropriate time, try accessing the drive using setup assistant.

Setup assistant may be able to "bring everything over" to the new Mac -- or at least, your account(s), data files, etc.

Just wondering...
Can you re-assemble the Mini?
What happens if you try booting to INTERNET RECOVERY (this IS NOT the same as "the recovery partition")?
Command-OPTION-R
at boot.

Does it work?
Will the internet utilities load?

The drive won’t let me boot up or even install from recovery. It says the drive is “locked” and that I should reformat to resolve the issue.

I’ve managed to dig out an old hard drive where I’ve installed a new copy of Mac OS and used a HDD enclosure which has enabled me to transfer the media files onto a different drive. It’s taking alot time to transfer 700gb worth of media files using 2.0 USB enclosure.

After it’s sorted I’ll probably put in a 120gb SSD as main drive and hopefully format the current drive to use as spare if it’s still working.