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Restoring Catalina to Mac mini (2012/Intel)

jaw04005

jaw04005

macrumors 601
Original poster
Aug 19, 2003
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I'm trying to fix a friend's Mac mini (Intel, 2012) that runs Catalina. The drive is fine (it's an SSD), but it got corrupted because he was trying to use Boot Camp and I think it messed up the APFS partition scheme. Boot loader shows no bootable drives.

The Mac mini originally shipped with Mountain Lion.

I tried booting the Mac mini into Internet Recovery, but because Catalina uses APFS—Mountain Lion won't install. It just shows "Internal Drive" and you can't edit or format a drive with an APFS partition scheme in Mountain Lion's Disk Utility.

So, I thought well I'll create a Catalina USB installer on my Mac Studio. No dice. I can't download the Mac OS Catalina installer on the Mac App Store (using Apple's https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT211683 link) because it's not compatible.

I managed to find the installer on archive.org, but when I use Apple's createinstallmedia command (based on Apple's instructions here: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201372) it quits the installer and gives a security error.

The old way of copying InstallESD.dmg out of the package doesn't work either. Disk Utility complains that it can't be verified for restore to the USB drive.

Any idea on what to do?

I had an external drive and tried to use Internet Recovery to install Mountain Lion to the external. That worked. However, thanks to security changes (and I'm guessing two factor authentication?), I can't access the Mac App Store on Mountain Lion. It says my password is wrong repeatedly.

I guess I'm going to try to copy the archive.org version of Catalina to the Mac mini and go from there. If not, I guess I could use the DD command in Terminal, but I've always had trouble with making bootable drives that way.

This is becoming a PITA.
 
Have you tried Internet Recovery using "Option-Command-R"? According to this Apple page; "On an Intel-based Mac, if you use Option-Command-R during startup, you might be offered the latest macOS that is compatible with your Mac.", which should be Catalina.
 
CoastalOR said:
Have you tried Internet Recovery using "Option-Command-R"? According to this Apple page; "On an Intel-based Mac, if you use Option-Command-R during startup, you might be offered the latest macOS that is compatible with your Mac.", which should be Catalina.
Click to expand...

It just offers Mountain Lion either way.
 
I did this Yesterday on the same mac mini
installed Mountain lion
had a copy of Mojave off an external drive and installed that onto mt Lion.
Safari Mountain lion blocked everything and Firefox won't boot while older Opera will run on MT Lion

if you can get El Captain on the mini, they have a better safari and apple app store to download Catalina
or
you can make a bootable USB of Catalina and press option to add that as well.
 
I finally got El Cap on the Mac mini because I had a USB of it. Of course, it only reads AFPS and can't edit. So, I finally got Catalina to download and installed it.

It's back up and running now. Thanks for the tips. On a side note, he had the server version of Mac mini which I've never seen before.
 
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I have a 2012 2.6ghz i7 quad-core Mini Server too, used it heavily for audio/video editing but now it's just a fileserver for archival storage and time machine. From everymac:

"The Mac mini "Core i7" 2.6 (Late 2012/Server) technically is a "configure-to-order" configuration of the MD389LL/A Mac mini "Core i7" 2.3 (Late 2012/Server), but also is documented as a separate model for reader convenience. Other than processor, these two models are identical."
 
jaw04005 said:
I finally got El Cap on the Mac mini because I had a USB of it. Of course, it only reads AFPS and can't edit. So, I finally got Catalina to download and installed it.

It's back up and running now. Thanks for the tips. On a side note, he had the server version of Mac mini which I've never seen before.
Click to expand...
good for you, these are great machines and Apple does come through, just in tedious ways sometimes!


I screwed up and reset my Apple TV gen 3 yesterday and can't get any iCloud account to stick on the hockey puck!
 
Boyd01 said:
You may be out of luck... see this thread, which claims Apple has confirmed that iCloud is no longer supported on the Apple TV3:

Click to expand...
thanks for the link,
I can airplay a video from the MacBook Pro to that so it has some limited purpose.
and I wont try to get an account on their today.
too bad we dont get ice or anything cold down here or I can use that as a hockey puck!
 
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Boyd01 said:
I have a 2012 2.6ghz i7 quad-core Mini Server too, used it heavily for audio/video editing but now it's just a fileserver for archival storage and time machine. From everymac:

"The Mac mini "Core i7" 2.6 (Late 2012/Server) technically is a "configure-to-order" configuration of the MD389LL/A Mac mini "Core i7" 2.3 (Late 2012/Server), but also is documented as a separate model for reader convenience. Other than processor, these two models are identical."
Click to expand...
I have this machine. I have 3 2019 macbook airs, 2008 macbook unibody, 2014 macbook pro, 2018 mac mini and 2012 mac mini. Far and away the best and most stable machine in the house is 2012 running high sierra.....that should tell you something about the garbage Apple is putting out these days---especially on the OS side.
 
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Reactions: August West
OP:

Perhaps the best thing you can do for your friend is to teach him how to back up.

IF he (and you) had had a bootable cloned backup created with either CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper, getting back-up-and-running would have been very easy.
 
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