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9.5mm 3 or 4TB HD

jeroen020

jeroen020

macrumors member
Original poster
Aug 25, 2012
32
18
Amsterdam, The Netherlands
I'm looking to put a bigger HD in the current Mac Mini to replace a 1TB fusion drive. I can't find any 9.5mm drives over 2TB, the 3 and 4TB models are all taller. The 2TB 9.5 drives have been around since 2013 so I was hoping one would be coming out by now. Any thoughts on when we're likely to see higher capacity ones hitting the market?
 
I second this question. I've got a 2011 mac mini running as my server, and I'm getting pretty close to filling up the 2 Tb drives. I haven't seen any leaks yet showing when bigger 2.5" 9.5 mm drives will hit the market, but I'm really hoping something comes out soon.
 
Looked into a bit further. Seagate/Samsung has a 2.5" 4TB M3 (external only for now, bus powered), looks like it's 15mm also, with 5 platters. At 800GB per platter a 9.5mm (3 platters) drive would be capped at 2.4TB.
With consumer SSD's now available as 2TB (Samsung 850) maybe a 9.5mm 4TB SSD will be sooner to hit the street than a magnetic one, albeit at a much higher price.
Looks like external storage is the way to go for me now, then SSD in a few years (or my next gen Mini).
 
jeroen020 said:
I'm looking to put a bigger HD in the current Mac Mini to replace a 1TB fusion drive. I can't find any 9.5mm drives over 2TB, the 3 and 4TB models are all taller. The 2TB 9.5 drives have been around since 2013 so I was hoping one would be coming out by now. Any thoughts on when we're likely to see higher capacity ones hitting the market?
Click to expand...

Why not just go external and use 3.5" drives. Seems like that's a much more cost effective method anyway. I've been running 3 MediaSonic USB 3.0 enclosures (4 Bay) hooked to my Mac Mini's for awhile now. I use SoftRAID with the 4-4TB drives in each one to get me to 12TB's worth of usable space in each. Alternatively you can just use Mirror RAID built into OSX. Either way, you can cram up to 4-8TB drives into each one if you want to drop the money.....

And if you don't want to put 4 drives into it at once, then just put one or two and as you fill those, add more.
 
My mini is a media center. Ripped my DVDs and Blurays so I could get rid of the boxes. That's almost 2TB today. I convert TV series I record from cable/sat and put them in iTunes too, about 600GB I think. Then a few hundred gig worth of photo's. And videos shot at 1080p (and with the new iPhone 4K) will probably need storage at a rate of a few gigs per month from now on.
 
paulrbeers said:
Movie collections, music collections, large photo libraries, backups of computers (time machine server), multiple VM's for work....

Why does it matter?
Click to expand...

Just curious….. and inclined to find that less is more convenient. I neither own nor keep much.

The 120 GB HDD of my 2009 Mac Mini is not full yet, though it idid start to fill up a bit when I started sports photography. Getting interesting shots involves anticipating what might happen, thus landing up with many shots that are not worth using on websites or in the local newspaper. I cull most but do archive a worthy few, now on an external 500 GB HDD. It will take a few years to fill, I'm sure. I also have an external 1 TB HDD for Time Machine, my second, replacing the first 320 GB one after about 3 years.
 
Micky Do said:
Can't help but wonder folks squirrel away on multi TB drives!
Click to expand...
Almost all my several TB is video ripped from my DVD and Blu-ray collection. Then I sold the physical optic media, which helped cover the cost of the HDDs, and gave me back a chunk of shelf and cupboard space.

Plus about 500GB of other stuff (including audio).

Bit over 6 TB all up, plus two backups of each drive, one stored off site. Unlikely to increase much in size either as that collection is from about 25 years of buying, and also we have Netflix and other vid streaming sites now in Australia so a lot of my videos can be ditched over time, especially the low res ones. Will still keep the BR ones, and the unusual hard to get stuff.

Only downside is the cost of replacing the drives every so often on a preventative basis, before they fail, but that cost is rapidly falling. Using 4 TB drives, and they are already below $200 AUD. Expect it to be around half that next time I do a replacement run, maybe at the end of 2016.
 
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Micky Do said:
Can't help but wonder folks squirrel away on multi TB drives!
Click to expand...

At work we have a 10TB server that's half full.

At home I have 2 x 2TB drives. One for movies and tv shows, the other for personal stuff and music. I've got about 800gb of personal stuff, half of it is projects, photographs and raw movie files for advertising (entire portfolio).

You go on to say that you have a 120gb drive that isn't full. This tells me you either don't do any work on your laptop or only do work that's mostly emails and text.
 
Micky Do said:
Just curious….. and inclined to find that less is more convenient. I neither own nor keep much.

The 120 GB HDD of my 2009 Mac Mini is not full yet, though it idid start to fill up a bit when I started sports photography. Getting interesting shots involves anticipating what might happen, thus landing up with many shots that are not worth using on websites or in the local newspaper. I cull most but do archive a worthy few, now on an external 500 GB HDD. It will take a few years to fill, I'm sure. I also have an external 1 TB HDD for Time Machine, my second, replacing the first 320 GB one after about 3 years.
Click to expand...

Which sort of camera and image format do you use? Are you working with RAW files at the maximum resolution or something less demanding?
 
Celerondon said:
Which sort of camera and image format do you use? Are you working with RAW files at the maximum resolution or something less demanding?
Click to expand...

He either shoots in JPG or doesn't take very many photographs. Either way, it's ridiculous to question how people fill multi-terabyte drives.
 
bladerunner2000 said:
At work we have a 10TB server that's half full.

At home I have 2 x 2TB drives. One for movies and tv shows, the other for personal stuff and music. I've got about 800gb of personal stuff, half of it is projects, photographs and raw movie files for advertising (entire portfolio).

You go on to say that you have a 120gb drive that isn't full. This tells me you either don't do any work on your laptop or only do work that's mostly emails and text.
Click to expand...

I don't have a laptop. I have an early 2009 Mac Mini, which I use for work as a teacher (mainly Pages & Numbers, the odd downloaded app and Internet, plus iTunes along with Garage Band to digitise audio from tape) and personal use (more of the same plus photography).

bladerunner2000 said:
He either shoots in JPG or doesn't take very many photographs. Either way, it's ridiculous to question how people fill multi-terabyte drives.
Click to expand...

Why the ridicule? Does it make you feel smugly superior, or something?

Celerondon said:
Which sort of camera and image format do you use? Are you working with RAW files at the maximum resolution or something less demanding?
Click to expand...

I use a Fujifilm X20, at the maximum 12 megapixel resolution, saved as JPEG files, and edited with iPhoto. Nothing flash, but as an amateur photographer the X20 was within my budget, and suits my style. I'm not deeply into photography as an art or anything. I do take quite a few photos, but cull heavily, keeping only the ones that tell a story……

DSCF1563.jpg
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Hence I do not bother with archiving a large number of photos that will be of little interest to me or anyone else.

Yes, a better camera would get better shots, but to make the most of it I would need a computer with more grunt to run better apps, and more storage; all beyond my budget at present.….. Even I did the upgrade, I would still only be keeping the most interesting photos. I doubt that I would be needing multi TB storage.

I do have some music from CDs on iTunes, but mostly I listen to music on the radio, or at live performances.

Can't see the point of storing movies as some folks seem to do, in large numbers. While we do listen to a piece of music many times, we don't tend to watch most video content repeatedly.

Video is not a big part of my life anyway. I don't have a TV. If I want to watch sport, I go to a pub. For movies, I prefer the cinema. I used to sometimes rent a DVD, but they are gone from where I am at.

 
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Seagate is just about the only supplier to go beyond 1Tb in 9.5mm.They recently released a 2Tb/7mm HDD ,which proves they have the technology to put 1Tb on a platter. HGST has even withdrawn a 1.5TB drive in 9.5mm
They could make a 3TB 9.5mm drive.
But it seems we are at the end of the laptop HDD era. manufacturers switch to SSD because there is more money to make.
Customers are switching to SSD for speed reasons, and nobody needs to carry such huge amounts of data around in a mobile device.
I Wonder if we'll ever see such drives.
Only people with HTPC's or PS4 systems have the desire for large HDD.No real need for speed,but focus on price/Gb and low power low noise.
One option would be to put a 3TB Toshiba drive in an optibay ,and get rid of the optical drive.put a 120 or 240GB SSD in the place of the current HDD and put your OSX system files there:
for speed and power =(HEAT) reduction. Toshiba drives are 12,5mm ,just as optical drives are, so this must fit.
 
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It seems hard disk manufacturers are getting lazy. It has been 3 years since the first 9.5mm 2TB drive was released.
 
This is not for a Mac mini, reused thread. It should go into Mac Peripherals.
 
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