[brento]

I have a mini 9 with osx (10.5.8) installed using the older DellEFI method. Went smoothly and I gave it to my mom. Not sure what she did, but now the system won't boot up and it appears the problem may be that the hard drive won't mount. My guess is an osx update.

I launched disk utility using the OSX USB I made and it cannot mount the hard drive. since it won't mount, it will not format or partition the drive either.

I gave up so i tried to reinstall ubuntu over it and start all over again, but ubuntu cannot install because the drive is locked/unmounted/something.

I have another dell mini 9 with osx that is working perfectly so i can use that to troubleshoot or something.

Thanks in advance.

[maddog]

It seems to me that you might have a defective hard drive.
I do not have enough info to be assertive but if you can not install Ubuntu, i might be right.

[underwhelmed]

If the SSD doesn't show the proper size in the BIOS, it is dead.

As far as I know, 10.5.8 is the latest for Leopard, so it isn't a software update problem.

[brento]

the ssd shows up correctly in the bios and it shows up in disk utility and ubuntu. i'm relatively hesitant to send it to dell w/ osx on it, but i guess i may have to.

it also passes all of the disk utility diagnostics.