Mac Mini 2011 OS Reload

[sranjan]

Some of you guys might have seen my previous thread ... or not.

I bought a base mac mini 2011 and upgraded it my self. 50 percent done right now.

I have the 8gb of ram working. I need to install the ssd. I only want one hdd and the main hdd needs to be the ssd.

How do I reinstall OS Lion onto the ssd. Is it possible to do it via usb or something because there is no cd drive.

Thanks

 

[esmith]

Some of you guys might have seen my previous thread ... or not.

I bought a base mac mini 2011 and upgraded it my self. 50 percent done right now.

I have the 8gb of ram working. I need to install the ssd. I only want one hdd and the main hdd needs to be the ssd.

How do I reinstall OS Lion onto the ssd. Is it possible to do it via usb or something because there is no cd drive.

Thanks

First you will either need to create a Lion recovery usb (you can Google that...)

or if you have a SATA dock or a way to plug the drive that's currently in it into the Mac Mini you could copy the whole drive over using Disk Utility Restore (but technically you would still need a way to boot into disk utility, back to the Lion recovery usb)

 

[blevins321]

You can do it entirely via Lion Internet Recovery if you want to skip the USB-making steps. Get all the drives in place, then hold Command+R at boot. This will download a recovery partition from the internet then boot to download the Lion OS. You can use the disk utility program in the downloaded recovery partition to format the drives as desired.

 

[FrankHahn]

1. If the SSD and the HDD with Lion are now both in the Mini, start up from the HDD, restore the HDD to the SSD using the Apple Disk Utility. Then, choose the SSD as the startup disk.

2. If the SSD is not in the Mini, the HDD with Lion is in the Mini, you have two choices: (1) Insert the SSD into a USB enclosure and restore the HDD to the SSD using the Apple Disk Utility. Then install the SSD in the Mini. (2) Install the SSD in the Mini and restore the HDD to the SSD using the Apple Disk Utility. Then, choose the SSD as the startup disk.

3. If the original startup HDD is no longer working, install the SSD in the Mini and then install the Mac OS using either a USB stick or the network recovery as described in the previous posts.

 

[MJL]

Very simple! Make on an external HDD a backup with Time Machine. Put in the SSD. When booting hold down the option (alt) key when you hear the startup sound. Select Time Machine and then you can restore straight onto the new SSD.