Whats the probability the hard drive is fine?

[GameGuru38]

I just purchased a 2010 Mac Mini off eBay really cheap because he says it needs a new hard drive. He decided this because when he was attempting to put a fresh install of Mountain Lion on it and give it to a family member he gets the message from the App Store saying "This Item Is Temporarily Unavailable. Try Again Later." He said he took it to a specialist and they said it was the hard drive.

My question is, could it possibly be that Mountain Lion wasn't purchased on whatever Apple ID they were using and that is why he is getting this message and the hard drive is fine?

I bought a new SSD for when it comes just in case but if now I will use that elsewhere.

 

[treekram]

Yes, the Internet says that because the 2010 Mac Mini came with Snow Leopard (or possibly Lion) originally and because the person had no history of buying Mountain Lion, it won't allow you to install it free from the App Store (I'm pretty sure you could get it if you pay $20). That doesn't preclude a bad HDD. The 2010 Mac Mini may have issues with certain brands/models of SSD's.

Of course, this could all be a smoke screen and there's something else wrong with the computer. Caveat emptor.

 

[Jambalaya]

Agreed that message is from the App store not the computer. However what happens when you try and boot it is the real question and that you won't know till you get it.

Keep us posted its always interesting to follow these things through

 

[ActionableMango]

One would hope that a "specialist" would know how to diagnose a bad hard drive.

 

[GameGuru38]

You would think. It arrived today so I will check when I get home.

 

[GameGuru38]

** UPDATE ** Booted USB thumb drive with Mavericks, formatted 320GB hard drive, installed Mavericks and it seems to be working well. Will see we use it.

 

[Jambalaya]

Yeh - bargain then

Can I ask what you paid ?

 

[GameGuru38]

$177
[doublepost=1466111948][/doublepost]There is something weird though. I first attempted to install El Capitan via the USB thumb drive I installed El Capitan onto both iMacs and but it would just let me pick the drive to boot from but never got to the installation parts. I wonder up installing Maverick via USB thumb drive and that worked perfect. I then downloaded the El Capitan update via the App Store and attempted to install it. When it rebooted to the Apple Logo it stayed there all day, I literally left for work, came back 12 hours later and it was still there with no progress on the progress bar. I shut it off, booted the Mavericks USB again and installed perfect.

Why is El Capitan not wanting to work? What could I look for?

 

[treekram]

So you have Mavericks on the 2010 Mini (on the internal HDD), you downloaded El Capitan from the App Store and ran the "Install OS X El Capitan" app - it did it's thing and then rebooted (as it should) and then it got stuck?

Did you download and run the Install program from the same disk that Mavericks is running on. For me, when I tried running the Install program from an external disk, I had the same problem you are having. If you downloaded to the Mavericks disk and then ran the program from the Mavericks disk, it's not all that uncommon for the El Capitan install to get stuck. If you haven't done anything else to the system, you can try rebooting again in verbose mode and see what messages come up to point where it gets stuck. Press Command plus the V key when you hear the chime. The messages might point to a problem but unless it says there's a problem, I wouldn't spend too much time trying to diagnose the messages since a lot of the times the messages that come up are the typical messages that would show up during the boot process.

 

[GameGuru38]

Yeah I tried from and El Capitan USB thumb drive and from the same disk Mavericks was installed on and both did the same thing, upon reboot it just hung on the Apple logo. Mavericks installs perfect (haven't tried Yosemite yet but if I can't have the newest I would just stay with Mavericks).

 

[treekram]

Did you try verbose mode? The chances aren't very good that it will turn up something useful, but it's better than a 0-percent chance. The nice thing about being stuck is that the last set of messages should stay on the screen.

 

[GameGuru38]

I already reformatted and installed maverick again so I can't

 

[Jambalaya]

$177 that's a steal - well bid Sir

I am probably wrong but perhaps its an issue trying to jump from Mavericks to El Capitan ? It might be worth trying what was next to see if any upgrade works

 

[GameGuru38]

Yeah I can try Yosemite but El Capitan should work on the 2010 Mac mini, it works on both the 2008 iMacs.

 

[Jambalaya]

Yeah I can try Yosemite but El Capitan should work on the 2010 Mac mini, it works on both the 2008 iMacs.

Agreed it runs on my late-2009 and a friends 2008 MBP - I was just speculating (clutching at straws ) as you haven't done any other OS upgrades on it.

Good luck and keep us posted