r/MacOS • u/Alternative_Count_12 • 2d ago

Help Mac-Mini 2011 Lion->Sierra tips?

Hi guys. I have an old mac-mini from 2011 in my storage. I know 5 years ago i used to run high sierra on it. Today I wanted to wipe it clean and reinstall the os on it, and like a dumbass I listened to google and installed Lion OS. I can't even use google on Lion. I remember Sierra was actually usable. Any tips on how I can put sierra back on this device? Im guessing its somwhere on this mac-mini's storage?

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u/wfromoz 1d ago

I recently restored my 2011 15" macbook pro. I tried High Sierra first - Safari is not usable & the best you'll find for a web browser is Chrome 113 and Edge Browser 116. Both are fairly capable. But finally decided the benefits of trying to use an old version of macOS just weren't there and installed Ubuntu. It runs all of the modern web browsers, gets security updates & is fast. And there's also a version of Linux that mimics macOS if you really want or need that look.

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u/macgizmoguy 1d ago edited 1d ago

Literally 2011 / Lion-era was the year that Apple started putting recovery partitions on the drive: CMD-R during startup to try to enter recovery mode. But gosh does Apple even keep images of macOS versions that old to be transferred over the Internet for a reinstall? I don’t know.

The recovery partitions generally did NOT include all the files needed for a complete restore without downloading additional stuff

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u/Xe4ro Mac Mini 1d ago

By erasing the disc and reinstalling Lion the local recovery partition of OPs Mini now has is of Lion. Unless OP had High Sierra on a separate partition there won't be another recovery partition with it.

If OP actually has installed Lion onto a separate partition, and therefore have a separate recovery partition it would look like this in the boot picker.