Recovering data from Mac Mini that isn’t booting up

If your Mac Mini is running extremely slow, taking a long time to load and if, once the system is loaded, you open an application such as Safari it looks very heavy or the internet is slow, this is what you need to do to fix the Mac Mini and get the data retrieved.

Mac Mini Carbon Copy Cleaner for data recovery

The first thing that needs to be done is to test the drive to see if there is any fault. We use DriveDx, a software which gives information about the state of the drive. This software can be downloaded off the internet freely for a trial. If issues are found, it will tell you which issues there are. It is important to know that hard drives usually degrade after 36 months. The report given by DriveDx explains why the drive isn’t functioning correctly.

Once the issues have been identified, Carbon Copy Cloner is needed so that the drive can be imaged onto another drive, preferably a SSD drive for better performances. If you are imaging the drive, it is recommended to boot to a drive that has a Mac OS with Carbon Copy Cloner and DriveDx installed on it. Two drives are connected and plugged in externally, the SSD and the boot drive. Once booted with the hard drive, you can safely run Carbon Copy Cloner.

The whole process can take a few hours depending on the condition of the original drive. Once the image is complete, there should be a huge difference in speed and the Mac Mini should run 20 times faster than previously.

This process works with Mac Minis such as this Vintage model Mac Mini Late 2014 model A1347 Core i5 1.4GHz which came in for repair and which had passed the five years after sales support From Apple. The Mac was given a new lease of life without having to buy a new machine.