2012 Mac Mini - Swap 5400 rpm HDD in Fusion Drive for 7200 rpm?

[Insidious]

So I have a Late 2012 Mac Mini that came with a Fusion Drive. I have a spare 7200 RPM drive that I'm considering putting in my Mac by removing the 5400 RPM drive that is already in there and making a hopefully faster Fusion Drive. Has anyone done this before? I'm not expecting a major speed boost, but I feel like it will offer some improvement.

I keep reading that you need a Data Doubler kit in order to make use of two drive slots inside the Mac Mini, but if I have an Apple-installed Fusion Drive already, do I even need a Data Doubler? Obviously I'll need the right tools to perform the operation, but I'm just not sure.

Also, I see the data doubler kit comes in a lower bay variation and upper bay variation, but if I already have a fusion drive installed, aren't both bays being utilized?

 

[ActionableMango]

Yes both bays are utilized. You can swap out a SATA HDD for another. If Fusion has been doing its job then I doubt you will see much speed difference, so hopefully you are also getting some other benefit like a higher capacity drive.

I don't know if MacOS will automatically make a new Fusion drive out of the new combo, but if it doesn't you can trigger that change manually yourself.

 

[AFEPPL]

No, you will need to recreate the LVG and restore the data.
You will see no performance increase for recently used data/operations.

 

[Fishrrman]

Frankly, this isn't worth the trouble involved.

 

[Insidious]

Thanks, everyone! I think I’ll wait till I buy a bigger SSD and do two upgrades at once. Looks like the only benefit of 7200 rpm at this time would be for my Bootcamp partition.

 

[hfg]

If you buy a big enough SSD, you could partition it for your Bootcamp installation, and use the remaining SSD for your Fusion drive with whatever hard disk you install. That will make your Windows installation much more responsive being on the SSD too.

 

[Insidious]

If you buy a big enough SSD, you could partition it for your Bootcamp installation, and use the remaining SSD for your Fusion drive with whatever hard disk you install. That will make your Windows installation much more responsive being on the SSD too.

I like that suggestion. I may just do that. Thanks!