Mac Gurus - Help?

[jyl]

Mid 2010 Mac mini with original 320 GB internal HD, 16 GB RAM, OS X Yosemite. The internal HD is the boot disk, the OS and all apps as well as documents live on that HD. I keep my libraries (photo, music) on external HD #1, a Time Capsule backup on one partition of external HD #2, and use Carbon Copy Cloner to make a weekly copy of the internal HD and the libraries on another partition of external HD #2.

I ran Disk Utility / Verify on the internal HD, and it said the disk needed to be repaired from the Recovery HD. I booted with the Option key to the Recovery HD and ran Disk Utility / Repair on the internal HD, but it said the disk could not be repaired. Here is the screenshot.



What would you do?. I'm thinking I should make a bootable thumbdrive with OS X Yosemite, install a new internal HD, do a clean install of OS X Yosemite on the new internal HD. Then would you #1 restore from backup, or would that simply duplicate all the errors in the current internal HD?. Or would you #2 manually download and reinstall all apps and copy back all data, which will be time consuming. Or is there a better option?

I could buy a new Mac Mini but I don't like the current ones, and am holding out in hopes Apple will offer quad-core versions again.

By the way, the Mac Mini is, so far, starting up and operating normally AFAIK.

[techweenie]

You're on the right track. Back up apps and docs from the current HD. 99% chance the issue is a HD mapping problem. HDs detect bad sectors and remap automatically. But a sector failure in the wrong spot can scramble a directory, which sounds like what happened to you.

[jyl]

So #1 above then? Thanks.

[techweenie]

I believe #1 will do it. If you have a corrupted directory, the affected docs and apps simply won't work. And you can then replace them as they are identified.

[stomachmonkey]

That's a fun one to fix.

Option 1 will work if you are restoring from a full or incremental back up.

If you have cloned or done byte for byte backups you'll just end up restoring the problem.

FWIW, I ran one of my main boxes for a couple of years with that error. I really did not feel like going through the trouble of fixing it.

Unless it's a critical system or app resource that's lost its almost a "cosmetic" issue.

[jyl]

And what's the view on SSD vs HDD for this application?

Old internal HDD is 320 GB. 2010 Mac Mini takes a 2.5" SATA 2 drive.

500 GB SSD (Crucial) would cost about $180 locally, $155 online, would still have to keep libraries on external HDD, perhaps faster launching apps, would it be more reliable than a HDD?

1 TB HDD 5400 rpm 2.5" (WD Blue) would cost about $70 locally, $55 online, could move libraries to internal HDD to simplify backup and maybe improve speed of loading libraries?

This is the family computer, lives in the kitchen, mostly used for Music, Netflix, Safari. Not used for anything "heavy duty".

[stomachmonkey]

Sidebar.

Did the El Capitan upgrade on a couple of boxes earlier in the week.

Aside from the upgrade routine being somewhat different and lengthy and having to rebuild Mail twice I have to say I'm pleased.

Most notable improvement is how it handles memory.

It uses 40-50% less ram that Yosemite did / does.

On my 16gb MacBook Pro I was regularly running with 1gb or less of free ram, so far with Capitan the worst I've seen is 5gb free under the same usage.

Typically I'm at 7gb free.

[stomachmonkey]

DO NOT waste your money on 5400 rpm drives.

1tb 7200 rpm drives can be had for at or under $100

And that's for the Hitachi drives

I still don't trust ssds

They give almost no hint when they fail and are nearly impossible to recover

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822145875

[jyl]

Okay, 1 TB 7200 rpm HDD it is. Thanks!

I've upgraded wife's MacBook Pro to El Capitan. Will do this Mac Mini eventually. On my MBP, waiting for Parallels 11 to support El Capitan, which they just announced, so will upgrade this weekend. The kids' MBAs will get done too. I usually try to stay current with Apple's OS releases.

[Charles Freeborn]

Yosemite is / was a mess. I'm hoping El Capitan is better on my old ( 2009ish) machines. I had the same freeze out on my Macbook and to do a recovery from time machine re-build. Recovery mode restart, Disk Utility erase, restore from Time machine. Took over an hour, but it seems to be working well again. It did have to completely rebuild mail boxes though.
-C

[Deschodt]

+1 on El capitan.. Much snappier ! +2 on SSD drives for a mini !!

[Scott R]

I don't know your budget, but get the "APPLE SSD SM1024F" if you can it's a 1tb SSD and it's what I have in my work Macbook. It's incredibly fast.