MacOS – My OS X Mac Mini server crashed – How to restore it

mac-minimacosrestoreserver.apptime-machine

I have a 2011 Mac Mini Server. It is the unibody model that has two hard drives and no optical drive. I got this second hand so I don't have anything other than the machine itself.

The way I understand these things to be set up is that one drive is the primary drive and the second drive does time-machine backups.

The primary drive is starting to go bad, I connected it via USB to another Mac and ran Disk Utility which tells me:

  • Verifying volume “Server HD”
  • Checking file systemError: This disk needs to be repaired. Click Repair Disk.
  • Verify and Repair volume “Server HD”
  • Checking file systemVolume repair complete.Updating boot support partitions for the volume as required.
  • Error: Disk Utility can’t repair this disk. Back up as many of your files as possible, reformat the disk, and restore your backed-up files.

It looks like the secondary drive (Time Machine backups) is fine.

I believe the operating system is OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard Server.

What do I do?

  1. Replace the primary hard disk and try to boot it?
  2. Connect the time machine volume and a new (blank) HDD drive to another mac and try and run Disk Utility / Time Machine?
  3. Replace the primary hard disk in the Mac Mini Server and then Boot up an OS X install via a USB Drive?

If number 3, do I need to get a copy of OS X Snow Leopard Server server that I can boot from – or can I just use the Mountain Lion USB boot stick that I already have?

Best Answer

I am unfamiliar with the two disk Mac Mini Server. I have, however, had a Time Capsule for several years.

First of all:

  • Your file system is damaged beyond what Apple themselves can fix. Take the warnings very serious - you may loose data. I do not think that the hard disk is physically damaged, though.
  • You may risk accidentially loosing your internal Time Machine backups by accident.

At this point in time, I would suggest that you first create an extra backup of your Time Machine data (this most likely require an extra external drive the size of your Time Machine harddisk) which for the Time Capsule can be triggered from inside Airport Tool - I do not know how to do it for your hardware.

That done, get a copy of your installation media as suggested by soxman. After ordering with AppleCare - due to the severeness of this problem - you may want to consider downloading a torrent with the dvd images so you can get started before you loose data.

When you have it fixed, consider upgrading to Mountain Lion Server (if possible on your machine). I do not know if the installer can reformat the file system and restore the time machine backup, but it might be a shortcut to the 10.6 start.

A final note: I would recommend against using third party file system tools for anything else than salvaging files before reformatting the partition. File systems are so important that I would only trust Apple itself for OS X file systems.

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