Since the Apple SSD upgrade was quite a bit more money, I picked up a Samsung 830 256GB SSD from Amazon when they were still $407. Unpacked it and the new Mini today and went to work swapping it out for the stock HD. Thanks to the wealth of information online, the process went smoothly.
Installing Lion was a little more work due to all the different methods available. Knowing about Lion internet recovery, I made sure I had the Mini hooked up to ethernet. I had my new Apple wireless keyboard handy as well as my existing trackpad.
I was naive enough to think that was all I needed until I booted up and got the folder with the question mark. No internet recovery there. After a little research, I downloaded Lion Recovery disc assistant to my laptop and installed it to a 2GB USB drive I had attached and plugged it into the Mini.
The Mini booted from the USB drive but failed to recognize my keyboard or trackpad. When I pulled out an Apple mouse, it was recognized immediately.
In haste, I selected 'install Lion' and completely overlooked 'disc utility'. My new drive was not listed and it took me awhile to figure out that the disc utility to format the SSD was already on the Lion Recovery software, right there on the first page's menu below 'install Lion'. I selected one partition and options/partition scheme/GUID partition scheme. The keyboard wasn't recognized so I wasn't able to change the name of the volume at that time.
The new keyboard and trackpad were both recognized later during the Lion setup process.
That's really it. I should have known from my experience with PC's that the HD would have to be formatted but thought internet recovery would 'just work'. It will certainly be easier the next time!
Installing Lion was a little more work due to all the different methods available. Knowing about Lion internet recovery, I made sure I had the Mini hooked up to ethernet. I had my new Apple wireless keyboard handy as well as my existing trackpad.
I was naive enough to think that was all I needed until I booted up and got the folder with the question mark. No internet recovery there. After a little research, I downloaded Lion Recovery disc assistant to my laptop and installed it to a 2GB USB drive I had attached and plugged it into the Mini.
The Mini booted from the USB drive but failed to recognize my keyboard or trackpad. When I pulled out an Apple mouse, it was recognized immediately.
In haste, I selected 'install Lion' and completely overlooked 'disc utility'. My new drive was not listed and it took me awhile to figure out that the disc utility to format the SSD was already on the Lion Recovery software, right there on the first page's menu below 'install Lion'. I selected one partition and options/partition scheme/GUID partition scheme. The keyboard wasn't recognized so I wasn't able to change the name of the volume at that time.
The new keyboard and trackpad were both recognized later during the Lion setup process.
That's really it. I should have known from my experience with PC's that the HD would have to be formatted but thought internet recovery would 'just work'. It will certainly be easier the next time!
