My son’s three year old Mac Mini was acting strange. He had almost run out of hard drive space on the original 80 gigabyte drive, but even after I had connected a backup drive, deleted some junk files, and then ran Time machine, his system was still acting up.
This past Friday, he told me that the Mac Mini was not booting anymore – it just showed the folder with the question mark.
Ooooh boy.
I tried running disk utility – even erased the drive and tried to re-install Snow Leopard – but the installation just hung – it said 30 minutes remaining for two hours. Not a good sign. When I checked the drive again with disk utility, I got errors that seemed to confirm my suspicions that the drive had almost crashed, if it hadn’t already.
What to do?
The system was out of warranty, so I search the Google for Mac Mini repairs, and came across iFixit.com.
I have fixed many PC’s, but not so many Macs. Okay – no Macs.
But after reading the clear (and free!) online manual for replacing the hard drive in a Model A1176 (this means a Mac Mini manufactured in early 2006), I felt confident enough to order a new hard drive – the 500 gigabyte 7200 RPM (speedy!) Seagate. I also ordered the special putty knife, the fine Allen-head screwdriver, and a tool that had an odd name – a Spudger.
Total cost – $160.00. A new Mac Mini – $500.00. Repaired by a shop – $279.00 for only a 160 gigabyte hard drive!
The parts came.
The first thing I did was to print out the manual.
Then, it was on to the Mac Mini Repair!
One thing I like about the inelegant PC is the fairly easy access to open the case. There are usually screws that are easy to remove. The case pops off, and you can replace any part.
The Mac Mini? No screws. The putty knife is needed to wedge open the tight fitting case. This took the longest time, since I was unfamiliar with the Mac Mini, and did not want to rush and possibly break another part inside the case.
Once off, I followed the directions, and soon had swapped the failed hard drive for the much larger and quicker Seagate. The only problem I ran into was disconnecting the Airport connecting wire from the motherboard. I had to first re-connect the wire to the motherboard, then replace the Airport mini circuit board. A few sprays of air to clean the fan and CPU heat sink and motherboard, and it was time to re-assemble the Mac Mini.
The moment of truth had arrived. Will it power up? YES – the happy Mac chimes ring! Will Snow Leopard find the new hard drive? Another YES!
About 40 minutes later, Snow Leopard rebooted, and after connecting the Time Machine backup drive, I was able to start copying the 15 gigs of iTunes files back to the new hard drive. There are more files to copy over, but this will be done over the next few days.
Total time for the repair was about 90 minutes. If I do another, it will take less time, but all in all, I’m happy with iFixit.
I Fixed it!