Member Avatar for rham

Hi people
I have a problem with a macmini. It went down and when i tried to reboot i get the finder ?. I was running tiger. I used mostly for creative suite 2. I have
1. Zapped the pram
2. erased the volume and tried to reinstall. It all tests out fine and starts to install but when i gets down to about 25 minutes it starts to go the other direction up to around 2 hours then i get an error during installation.
3. I have ran disk warrior but it just wont reinstall. I have even gone back to the original os 10.3 which came with the computer. Is it the hardrive? Or logic board. I may try to replace the hardrive as its just a laptop hd but dont know about anything beyond that .
Thanks in advance

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Dani AI

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As observed, a failing internal disk is the most likely cause of installer errors and the flashing question‑mark boot icon. Before discarding anything, a few targeted checks will confirm the diagnosis and preserve recoverable data.

Try booting from alternate media (hold Option at startup to pick a boot device) or attach a USB boot drive. If the Mac runs normally from external media and the internal drive cannot be mounted, that confirms the drive as the fault. Use Target Disk Mode (hold T at startup) to mount the internal disk on another Mac and copy important files off before doing further work. If a drive still mounts, check SMART/health info in System Information or run a more detailed test via a SATA‑USB adapter and a tool such as smartmontools (smartmontools).

When replacing the drive, consider an SSD instead of a spinning disk for a large, inexpensive speed upgrade. After installing the new drive, boot from installer media or Internet Recovery, create a fresh volume, and restore user data using Migration Assistant or a cloned image. If the old drive is intermittently readable, clone it immediately to avoid further data loss. For drives that refuse to mount at all, professional data‑recovery services are the only reliable option.

If problems persist after fitting a known‑good drive, suspect another component (RAM, SATA cable, or logic board). Run Apple Hardware Test/Diagnostics (hold D at startup) or seek a shop to rule those out. For general Apple troubleshooting and diagnostics info, see Apple Support (Apple Support).

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Member Avatar for John A

Sounds like your hard drive is toast.

Member Avatar for rham

Thanks Joe i just ordered one appreciate your help

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