I picked up a mid level 2014 pretty cheaply and wanted to replace the 1TB hard drive with a 250GB Samsung 840 EVO I had laying around. I ordered the requisite Security T6 screwdriver from Amazon for approx $6.
As background, I've replaced CPUs and drives in the 2006 and 2007 Minis, I've added and swapped drives in 2011s and 2012s so I've had plenty of experience with ripping Minis apart.
My opinion is this is the hardest swap yet. In the 2011 and 2012s you didn't have to pull the power supply to get to the drives. In fact unless you were adding (or swapping) the secondary hard drive, you didn't even need to pull the motherboard. Unfortunately in order to get to the hard drive you have to pull the hard drive tray in the 2014 and thus it requires complete disassembly.
With all of that said, i followed the ifixit tear down to the T and it booted up just fine and only took me about 45 minutes. I just hope my SSD lasts as long as the Mini does so I don't have to do that again!
As background, I've replaced CPUs and drives in the 2006 and 2007 Minis, I've added and swapped drives in 2011s and 2012s so I've had plenty of experience with ripping Minis apart.
My opinion is this is the hardest swap yet. In the 2011 and 2012s you didn't have to pull the power supply to get to the drives. In fact unless you were adding (or swapping) the secondary hard drive, you didn't even need to pull the motherboard. Unfortunately in order to get to the hard drive you have to pull the hard drive tray in the 2014 and thus it requires complete disassembly.
With all of that said, i followed the ifixit tear down to the T and it booted up just fine and only took me about 45 minutes. I just hope my SSD lasts as long as the Mini does so I don't have to do that again!
