2010 mac mini, dead optical drive, which SSD?

[gvmelbrty]

I've got a mid-2010 mac mini and the internal superdrive recently died (apparently, this is quite common with iMacs and mac minis). Any way, I've already replaced it with an external DVD drive.

So, I'm thinking about putting an SSD in place of the dead optical drive - might as well use that space for something, right? My question is, would the Samsung 830 SSD be a good choice? If I'm not mistaken, 2010 mac minis are SATA II (or is it SATA I?) and the Samsung 830 is SATA III. Will that cause a problem?

Also, since the SSD will be the boot drive, does it matter where it goes, either in the optical drive position or the current hard drive position?

Thxs for your help.

-tom

 

[kc2ine]

so the apple was right with removing optical drive in new minis...

 

[Orange Furball]

Put your boot drive in the hard drive spot and the hard drive in optical drive bay.

Buy the samsung and if it doesn't work just return it. Its a great SSD so its worth a shot

 

[Liquinn]

I thought the 2010 Mini doesn't have the DVD drive?

Ahh whoops, my bad. I got confused between the 2010 and 2011 model then.

 

[Ifti]

Samsung 830 is a brilliant and very reliable SSD. I've reviewed speeds of one in my YouTube channel.
In fact I have a 3 week old 256GB Samsung 830 for sale over in the marketplace if interested Only reason for sale is I've ordered the 512GB version!

 

[gvmelbrty]

The problem with SATA 3 SSDs running at SATA 1 speeds on SATA 2 connectors only occurs with SandForce-based SSDs in conjunction with the NVidia SATA 2 chipset used in some Macs (see screenshot in first post).

Thus, if your Mac has the NVidia chipset, get an SSD that doesn't have a SandForce controller, e.g. a Samsung 830.

Flatfoot posted the above in another thread. I feel confident installing a 128gb Samsung 830 in my 2010 mac mini.

Thanks everyone for your help.

-tom