my son just inherited his grandparents' 2010-ish mini. when disk utility said it couldn't fix some issues and i didn't have the OS install disk, i ran disk warrior as an alternative. problem is, now i'm stuck in disk warrior as the startup disk. there is NO option to re-select the system drive as the startup while in DW. i tried to eject DW by hitting the eject button repeatedly upon startup/restart to no avail. it just keeps wanting to restart on the DW disc. the os is 10.6.8 (yes, i know. one crisis at a time). thanks to anyone who can help.
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startup disk not an option!
- Thread starter boynigel
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Have you tried to eject the DVD? It may be that there's a small pin hole near the slot - a straightened paper clip can be pushed in there to mechannically eject the media when the system is powered off.
Can you restart and then hold the option key to get a selection of available boot choices?
There may not be a viable OS on the Mini's drive. This could be due to the repair by Disk Warrior (it can happen - they do suggest having a backup before proceeding), or the drive itself having failed (it's 6+ years old). Can you boot from a recovery partition? Or create an installer from either DVD or USB? If so, I would pick a later OS. After all, how many times does one want to install an OS?
Can you restart and then hold the option key to get a selection of available boot choices?
There may not be a viable OS on the Mini's drive. This could be due to the repair by Disk Warrior (it can happen - they do suggest having a backup before proceeding), or the drive itself having failed (it's 6+ years old). Can you boot from a recovery partition? Or create an installer from either DVD or USB? If so, I would pick a later OS. After all, how many times does one want to install an OS?
If your Mini is about 1-1/4" tall, you have the 2010 model, if it's about 2-1/4" tall, it's 2009 or earlier. For the 2010 models (but not earlier), if the updates to the OS were applied, even if it's 10.6.X, you should be be able to run Internet Recover by pressing Command-R after turning the computer on. This requires network connectivity. It could take a while to get it loaded. Once there, one of the options is Disk Utility and there should be the option to eject the optical disk (if the steps suggested by the other posters doesn't work). Also, one of the reasons why Disk Utility may not have been able to do some repairs is because it can't do certain repairs on the disk that the OS is running on while it's running on that disk. If you can run Disk Utility that (hopefully) loads with Internet Recovery, it may be able to complete the repairs (it also may be that Disk Warrior did the same type of repair that Disk Repair tried to do). There are other options to run the OS off of the computer but from another disk (if you use other Macs).
As one of the other posters suggested, it may be time to replace the hard drive or upgrade to a SSD. There are various issues involved so when you get to that point, feel free to post again.
As one of the other posters suggested, it may be time to replace the hard drive or upgrade to a SSD. There are various issues involved so when you get to that point, feel free to post again.
Mine's about 2" tall and has the white top on it. i've since gottten the disk out. next is a RAM upgrade as it only has the 1 GB that came with it. probably going to replace the HD while i'm at it. now the fun part- figuring out which drive and RAM will work in this thing. do any of the sellers of this stuff offer assistance in choosing correctly, maybe based on serial number? i've dealt with a few in the past and i was pretty much on my own and had no assistance.
Crucial.com has an advisor tool that will tell you compatible RAM when you put in your computer's specs.
The ~2-1/4" high Mini is late 2009 or earlier. It's important to know which model you have when buying memory. If it came with 1GB memory, it's early 2009 or earlier. Go to the following:
https://checkcoverage.apple.com/
You can enter the serial number and it will tell you the model (year - early/mid/late) which can be used to determine which type of memory is compatible. As mentioned by the previous poster, crucial.com can advise you on the memory to buy. However, I just recently bought memory for a non-Mac system. I've usually bought from Crucial but this last time there was a $20 difference in the memory I bought between Crucial and other sellers of the Crucial memory. Usually there's only a few dollars difference. Interestingly, B&H Photo (where I bought the memory from recently) has a memory selector run by Crucial but the part # was different between what was on the Crucial site vs. the B&H site even though I'm pretty certain that it's the same memory. I just looked and on my late-2009 Mini for 8GB, there's a $7 difference between B&H and crucial.com.
Your HDD/SSD replacement/upgrade options will depend on which model Mini you have. I don't think it's that difficult to replace the HDD and memory - the big issues are cracking open the case and the wireless antennas.
https://checkcoverage.apple.com/
You can enter the serial number and it will tell you the model (year - early/mid/late) which can be used to determine which type of memory is compatible. As mentioned by the previous poster, crucial.com can advise you on the memory to buy. However, I just recently bought memory for a non-Mac system. I've usually bought from Crucial but this last time there was a $20 difference in the memory I bought between Crucial and other sellers of the Crucial memory. Usually there's only a few dollars difference. Interestingly, B&H Photo (where I bought the memory from recently) has a memory selector run by Crucial but the part # was different between what was on the Crucial site vs. the B&H site even though I'm pretty certain that it's the same memory. I just looked and on my late-2009 Mini for 8GB, there's a $7 difference between B&H and crucial.com.
Your HDD/SSD replacement/upgrade options will depend on which model Mini you have. I don't think it's that difficult to replace the HDD and memory - the big issues are cracking open the case and the wireless antennas.