I have a Mac Mini A1347 that was wiped out before given to me. It has a 320 GB hard drive but it is not showing up when I attempt to install "El Capitan". I am trying to format the partition but it does not even show up. Here is a screenshot I took of the only thing that appears (the bootable usb flash drive with el capitan):
Any help in finding and formatting the 320gb drive in preparation for the "El Capitan" install would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.
Note: The screenshot was taken from a separate device.
Update #1
I exited "Disk Utility" and was back at the "OX X Utilities" menu. There I opened up terminal and typed:
diskutil cs list
I get back the following message:
"No CoreStorage logical volume groups found"
I don't understand what has happened to the 320 GB hard drive. It is completely gone. Could it be a bad hard drive cable on the mini mac?
Best Answer
I had exactly the same problem (on an iMac). And no, if the system doesn't see it, you can't do anything to test it. Opening the computer is the way to go. I opened mine and discovered that one of the Sata connectors (my Sata cable had two connectors : data and power) had come lose. It might be something similar, although most probably I'd say disk is toast.
What you can do once you open the computer is put your disk in an external enclosure and test it with another computer to see if it's recognized and properly formatted (even if it's not properly formatted, it should show up, but as long as it's in the enclosure, why not format it correctly if you see it's not). That will save you the trouble of closing the Mac mini after unplugging and plugging the Sata cable on a bad disk. If the disk is fine, check the Sata cable and Sata connectors, and try again. If you computer still doesn't recognize the disk, you probably have a bad Sata cable. Could be a bad Sata connector on the motherboard, but that's unlikely.