Mini Kernel Panic and HD Won't Mount

[donhodges]

I solved this problem with help from the Genius Bar, just posting for anybody else who has the problem...

My Mini hung up while ripping a CD, couldn't get it to Force Quit iTunes, finally switched it off. On restart, got a kernel panic ("You Must Restart Your Computer"). Got the AppleCare help desk. tried all the keyboard/boot interventions, no help. Tried to re-install OS X from the CD, but Disk Utility "dimmed out" the HD so there was no target drive to re-install the os to.

Took it in to the Atlanta-Lenox Apple Store (first customer Monday morning, got right in to the Genius Bar). Very helpful tech checked it out with a Firewire diagnostic drive, said I had 2 choices: he could erase and re-install the os, or I could probably recover the drive and the data using DiskWarrior. I didn't have much confidence in my backup on a usb external drive, so I elected to buy DiskWarrior and give it a try.

End of story: DiskWarrior took about 40 minutes to rebuild the HD directory and it booted right up. this is a great utility, highly recommended.

The tech said they see a lot of Apples (all varieties) that have this HD corruption at 8 to 12 months (mine was 11 months). He attributes it to larger HDs and disk-intensive ops like photo/video processing.

The whole routine is still better than fighting malware on OS "W", but it is a hassle to reach someone who can confidently help out. I was down for 8 days when i really needed the Mini, but my old 566 mhz Linux box chugged right along through it all.

[Satcomer]

What the genius did tell you is you can do a lot of preventative maintenance so something like that doesn't happen again. I could go into rotating logs (/Applications/Utilities/Console) and all of that but it probably would make you fall asleep. Luckily a third part developer made a cool little free third party application called Yasu that will rotate (learn about the word cron - search these boards for the answer), clear and delete the pesky font cache. I bet if you run Yasu once every month and Fix Permissions with Disk Utility about every two weeks you will never have anything like this happen again.

Also I highly suggest a third part DISK utility to keep the OS x disk healthy. IMHO the best one for the Mac is Alsoft's Disk Warrior. Warning though, stay away from a discontinued product. It will mess up a modern OS X system faster that you stop it.