Any USB 2 external enclosure will be fine, they are cheap these days, and do their job...
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newb - SSD upgrade suggestions?
- Thread starter sou1 so1di3r
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Any USB 2 external enclosure will be fine, they are cheap these days, and do their job...
Replace the hdd that is closest to the black circle plate it is the easiest one to replace. You can pick the boot drive later. Also once you have a working ssd boot drive the deeper drive can be erased and or reformatted. I suggest have 2 boot drives for a while just to be sure the ssd is good .
On my thumb nail below I have 1 internal drive and 1 external drive, both can boot. The mini lets you pick . If you did not pick the mini picks the last drive you booted on.
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I installed the 256GB Vertex 4 on a Mid 2011 Mac Mini (2.7 GHz Intel Core i7, 8GB RAM, AMD Radeon HD 6630M 256MB). Bought the Vertex 4 on Amazon for about $210 in July 2012.
The hardest part of this upgrade was taking apart the mac mini and putting it back together again... and even that wasn't very hard (as long as you have some mini torx screwdrivers). Upon booting, it came up saying that the drive was not recognized and it took me right into the Disk Utility - which allowed me to create a partition with no problem. No fuss no muss. No more trouble than installing a SATA drive. I rebooted using the handy dandy Lion installation usb drive I created to reinstall a fresh version of Mac OS X 10.7.4. And now I am enjoying an even faster mini!
As others may have mentioned, you need an additional sata controller cable and mounting screws if you plan to install two hard drives in the mini.
To do that, check out this forum post:
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1201731/
I already like this drive so much I've got a 512GB version on order that I plan to put in my MacBook Pro.
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If I want to replace the main drive in my mini (I have the mid level mini) - what is the best way to go about cloning the drive? Or is kinda like I need to just reinstall everything?
One thing to note - I've got all my important files backed up on Dropbox because I share it with my office computer, so it's not the worst scenario to just reinstall 20 or so programs and apps, but it sure would be nice to have the drive boot up and be seamless.
I do have a MBP if that helps.
One thing to note - I've got all my important files backed up on Dropbox because I share it with my office computer, so it's not the worst scenario to just reinstall 20 or so programs and apps, but it sure would be nice to have the drive boot up and be seamless.
I do have a MBP if that helps.
has anybody tried one or two of these in a mac mini yet?
http://www.amazon.com/Monster-Digit...sr=8-10&keywords="mac+mini"+solid+state+drive
400gb ssd
sandforce controller
7.0mm
2.5"
http://www.amazon.com/Monster-Digit...sr=8-10&keywords="mac+mini"+solid+state+drive
400gb ssd
sandforce controller
7.0mm
2.5"
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price is too high, i rather a 512gb ssd from samsung
http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-list...=1-1&keywords=samsung+512gb+ssd&condition=new
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Thanks to everyone's posts on this thread. I'm 95% sold on doing the SSD upgrade myself.
If I get a 512 is one partition okay or is there some magic with SSDs that makes them better with smaller partitions?
If I get a 512 is one partition okay or is there some magic with SSDs that makes them better with smaller partitions?
I use one partition on mine as i run only lion with it.
I have an older mini with a 256gb ssd. it is a wall mount in my kitchen. it has a 256gb ssd with 2 partitions one for snow and one for lion.
You can start with a 512gb partition. if you add mountain lion and still want plain lion disk utility will let you peel off part of the 512 gb into a second partition.
or you can just start with a 400 and a 112. use the 400 for lion and later use the 112 for mountain lion.
Why is this 512 SSD so much cheaper? Is Crucial a crappy brand?
http://www.amazon.com/Crucial-2-5-Inch-Solid-State-CT512M4SSD2/dp/B004W2JL3Y/ref=pd_cp_pc_2
http://www.amazon.com/Crucial-2-5-Inch-Solid-State-CT512M4SSD2/dp/B004W2JL3Y/ref=pd_cp_pc_2
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It's more involved certainly.
But there are really only two dangerous steps in the process and that is disconnecting the fan connector and disconnecting the IR connector. Unfortunately you have to do both of these early on in the process whether you replace the existing drive or add a 2nd one.
Both of these tasks are scary because you have to pull up on the connector quite hard and you can EASILY pull the header of the logic board and then you're looking at a broken Mini and big repair costs.
Once your past this step, taking the Mini apart is straightforward and fairly risk-free.
So if you're bored of only paying too much for HDMI cables you can now spend too much for a hard drive with the Monster name on it?
No thanks.I've got a Crucial m4 SSD that I recently installed in an old iMac and love it, massive performance upgrade. The 256gb model of that has now dropped well below $200 on amazon, really good deal.
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Amazon say drive first availible April 2011, so I'm guessing its one gen back?
I picked up an OCZ agility 3 (480GB) for $350 over the weekend, which is a bit cheaper per GB -- I don't think that price is significantly out of line.
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I was able to replace a single drive with SSD without removing IR and fan connector. It's possible to place a new single drive if you are patient and careful.
Thanks - that's good to know. Removing those connectors is like really scary, because you just don't know whether you are going to break the logic board.
The only way to do it safely is with proper bench-style magnifying glasses and to use a scalpel or similar to pry the connector out from the socket. If you just pull on the connector, 50-50 chance you will break it, or at best, pull the wires out of the connector.
So I contacted an Apple authorized reseller/repair place in my city and asked if they could upgrade my Mini with an SSD.
They said they could, if I provide the SSD, and that they could even keep the old HDD inside as well.
$90! I'm thinking this is a good deal since I already bought AppleCare and this will keep my warranty valid, yes?
Also would I have to buy a second cable for the other HDD if I decide to go through with this?
Thoughts?
They said they could, if I provide the SSD, and that they could even keep the old HDD inside as well.
$90! I'm thinking this is a good deal since I already bought AppleCare and this will keep my warranty valid, yes?
Also would I have to buy a second cable for the other HDD if I decide to go through with this?
Thoughts?
My thoughts are that if you are considering this it means you are slightly apprehensive about doing it yourself, and in that case you should definitely get someone qualified to do it for you.
Actually, I think that's probably good advice even if you were confident. I build PC's all the time and am very confident disassembling and reassembling all sorts of electronic equipment, and I still got a service engineer to do it for me.
Yes, you will need the extra sata cable (and mounting screws and grommets) if you want them to fit the SSD as a 2nd drive. Ifixit sell this stuff.
And regards warranty? Not sure, but I would think you would still trash your Apple warranty no matter who does the upgrade. The people doing the upgrade should warrant their work though.
Ok thanks. I thought maybe since it is an apple authorized repair center it would cover it, but I need to double check.
I will have to drive by and explain and get all the details from the store. Right now I have only communicated via email.
I have a Mac mini server (Mid-2010) which came with the dual 7200rpm hard drives. I had the boot drive replaced with a 128GB OCZ Vertex3 SSD which has the operating system and applications. The boot SSD is probably using 27GB of the 128GB capacity, lots of space left.
My user account lives on the second (internal) hard drive and my iTunes library is there. I think I'm using up about 220GB of the 500GB capacity, a little less than half. I'm doing Time Machine backups of the secondary (user) drive, but I'm not even bothering backing up the boot drive. I can rebuild from scratch, plus I have an external Snow Leopard boot drive somewhere in the closet.
Most of my movies are actually on a 3TB external Firewire800 drive.
Just upgrading the boot drive to SSD provides enormous performance benefits.
Note that I didn't do the upgrade myself although I bought the drive. Upgrading the 2010 Mac mini server is a bit tricky and I didn't feel like putting myself through that sort of nail-biting excitement so I paid a local Mac repair shop to do the upgrade for me (they guarantee their work). It was about $90 bucks of labor and they had my Mac for about three hours. I used to build my own Linux boxes in the late Nineties, early 2000s, but diddling with PC hardware isn't all that interesting so I had no problem letting someone else do the work.
This is what I will probably do. What exactly will I have to do once they put the SSD in there?
Because all my stuff will still be on the 7200rpm drives once they give it back to me I am thinking
Except if you're really short of cash, don't go for a 128GB SSD. It's just too small and not future proof. A 256GB is the sweet spot of money vs space in my opinion. I'd go for that. Your machine will keep its value much better in case you wanna sell, and actually you can always keep the SSD with you for your future computer probably if things don't change much.
Well, I put in a blank SSD and reinstalled the operating system and applications from scratch (I had burned a bootable Lion install DVD), but I wanted a fresh start.
You could do a Time Machine backup of your current drive, then restore from it to the new SSD I think. Or you could use a third-party utility like Carbon Copy Cloner.
You'll probably want to get an external drive enclosure (or two). They're about $15-20. That drive they'll pull out is perfectly usable. I usually keep my old boot drives around for a month or two (just in case I need some special customizations or if something goes wrong, which it never has) then I'll wipe them clean and repurpose them.
Right but can't I keep the old drive INSIDE the machine as well?
and if I restore from a time machine backup, how would I make sure it only gets the OS/Apps on the SSD?
If the OS/Apps only really take up around 30GB I'm not sure why I would need a bigger drive than the 128GB.
My current Mac Mini is set up as a time machine backup from my old 2008 macbook.... is it sometimes better to just FRESH install the os?
You're going to have to do some moving things around manually.
I have a 256GB SSD inside the machine for OS, programs and temporary files and working space. Plus a 1TB drive, also internal, for data - pictures, music, a few videos etc. I had to mess about with iTunes, Aperture etc to move the libraries to the data disk, but it was all pretty easy. I basically did all the "housework" on the hard disks *before* my SSD upgrade, so that when I migrated over to the SSD, all the data was where I wanted it and all I was cloning to the SSD was the stuff I wanted on the SSD and not all the data.
It's best to buy a bigger SSD than you need so the SSD has room to do its own house-keeping and keep the write speeds up by having sufficient free space.
With your additional information, I suggest you keep the original hard drive inside the Mac mini, and install a fresh copy of the OS and applications on the newly installed SSD.
And if I do this I can still boot from my old HD until I get everything transferred over I guess?