Mac mini 2011 SSD Upgrade Question

[imageWIS]

Hello all,

I'm taking my 2011 Mac mini out of mothballs (still turns on and runs without any issues) and turning it into a digital home theater of sorts. Anyways, I got a great Black Friday deal on an SSD and wanted to see what's the best way of going about formatting it, installing Mac OS, and getting it ready for install? Also, TRIM: Yay or Nay?

Thank you!

 

[ElectronGuru]

2010 with ssd here

Put it in

Boot with os of choice

Format with utility

Install os

The only thing tricky is if you need to preserve hd contents. If not, plug in the os usb installer and go

Extras

Mojave is great for dark mode and has trim built into the new format

Enable HiDPI with terminal asap

Try out iina for file playback

 

[ignatius345]

I opened up my old Mini some years back to upgrade to an SSD like you're doing. The difference was night and day. It's a bit tight in there getting everything apart of course, but iFixit had a good guide.

I'd prepare a flash drive-based installer like the guy above rather vaguely alluded to. Here's a High Sierra guide (ignore all the plugs for the apps they're pushing) -- and HS is probably the latest OS that machine supports without tricking the installer into working somehow?

Probably easiest to just back up stuff wtih Time Machine or Carbon Copy Cloner, do the install, then bring over whatever you need from that backup. That's how I'd do it, anyway.

 

[djc6]

Consider this $20 kit - it allowed me to install a 2nd drive - so I have original 500GB HDD and 512GB SSD installed in my 2011 mac!

https://eshop.macsales.com/shop/internal_storage/Data_Doubler