:o) Brought home my 'new to me' 2012 Mini!

[davekro]

I am jazzed. I finally stopped analyzing and pulled the trigger tonight on a Craig's List 2012 Mac Mini. Woo Hoo! 2.6 i7, 16GB RAM, 512 SSD (Samsung 840 Pro), 1TB HDD, WL KB & Mouse, USB SUperDrive, IR conn. on board broken (USB IR cost $20 so no worries). He even threw in a 20 button keypad (iHome wired). I paid his asking price of $1,000.

I was waiting for a price drop from Amazon (or anywhere) on the two new 24" Dell U2415 monitors I plan to buy on or before Black Friday when yesterday Amazon's price popped back up by $20 to $259.99. Doooh! I think it might drop back down in next day or two. I found camelcamelcamel on Amazon which is cool and tells you the last 5 price changes on an item. cool.

One will be connected via HDMI and one from the Thunderbolt port. Can I use a Mini DP to Mini DP cable (Monoprice 12001)? I think that is compatible w/ Thunderbolt, right?

I'm undecided if I want to leave the two drives in fusion mode as they are right now or split them. Do I really want/need a 1.5 TB fusion drive??? Since the entire used drive on my current late 2006 iMac is only about 225 GB's I think separating the 512 SSD might be the way to go. When my iMAc started acting wiggy, I got scared and spent $100 for a 3TB external drive and made Carbon Copy clone copies on it. Having a slow 5400 internal 1TB HDD may be just for... I have no idea ;o) The external is USB 3.0 and has my Time machine and several bootable clones on diff. partitions. Almost midnight How'd THAT happen... sleep for me. play tomorrow.

 

[Celerondon]

...2.6 i7, 16GB RAM, 512 SSD (Samsung 840 Pro), 1TB HDD, WL KB & Mouse, USB SUperDrive...

And He SCORES!

Yes, Mini DP is compatible with Thunderbolt.

I think that you are good either way with that Fusion Drive (FD) choice. If you decide to split the two drives then the 512GB SSD is certainly large enough to stand on its own. On the other hand, if you keep the existing FD there will be no "slow 5400 internal 1TB HDD" to worry about. With your declared usage pattern, that system will feel and run like it has a 1.5 TB SSD all of the time. The HDD will still be present and detectable by a properly configured benchmark program but other than the whisper of the spinning platter you will not notice it at all.

 

[Cape Dave]

That is a great SSD. Well played

 

[hfg]

I have a similarly configured 2012 Mini and I divided the 512GB SSD into 2 equal partitions. One partition has Windows BootCamp installed ... and the other is part of a DIY Fusion drive with the 1TB hard disk. Works great for me.

Enjoy your new Mini ...

 

[c8rlo]

I am jazzed. I finally stopped analyzing and pulled the trigger tonight on a Craig's List 2012 Mac Mini. Woo Hoo!

congrats!!! i bought a base 2012 MM locally on Craigslist and upgraded it to 16GB ram and 2 512GB ssds' and couldn't be any happier...

 

[snagnyou]

I just got a late 2012 i5 mac mini for $300 upgraded memory to 16GB and 1 512GB SSD

 

[davekro]

I have a similarly configured 2012 Mini and I divided the 512GB SSD into 2 equal partitions. One partition has Windows BootCamp installed ... and the other is part of a DIY Fusion drive with the 1TB hard disk. Works great for me.

Enjoy your new Mini ...

Partitioning the SSD, interesting and great for your Bootcamp scenario.

EDIT... My new thought: Since I have no need for the 1TB internal HDD, why not just leave it fused to the 512 SSD that I will likely not fill up for eons. If I never have even 400GB on this 1.5 GB fused drive will one byte ever even be put on the HDD portion? Would the HDD even be prompted to spin up? With this kind of extra space (1200 GB for a while) I shouldn't have any concerns of how much less efficient Samsung's 840 Pro space saving algorithym is over the Apple's, right?

My original thought: "Since the entire 'filled' portion on my current late 2006 iMac's HDD is only about 225 GB's I think separating the 512 SSD might be the way to go."
The only reason I could envision of partitioning a small portion of the SSD would be for maybe a bare bones 'just boot drive'. But 1) I do not know how to separate this from my data or get from another source, 2) My 3 TB external USB 3.0 HDD already is partitioned into (1) 700gb, (4) 500gb & (1) 300gb partitions (not to mention a 500 GB FW 800 external HDD partitioned at 300/200gb). Besides a large volume for TimeMachine backups, I always Carbon Copy Clone my entire system before any updates. And maybe multiples to try different OS versions. I'm not that tech savy, but I can clone!

Being that it will likely be a very loooooong time before I personally would more than double my entire current HDD use, I'm thinking for my case, it seems better to unfuse the 1TB HDD and just let it sit idle and unused. The external USB 3.0 HDD will be a lot faster than my FW 800 HDD would be for cloning a 225 GB worth of data and I'm guessing the 3.0 USB HDD would still be a good bit faster to clone to than the internal 5400 2.5" HDD. (or would the internal have some advantage for some other reason??)

I guess I want to get confirmation from the experienced folk here for my particular use scenario. I certainly don't want to go thru the learning curve and time to migrate my old system over to the Mini and realize later "I should have configured it ... T H E O T H E R W A Y !"


I continue to Google and learn more before I start the migration. Also, I am on kind of a holding pattern waiting for my dream monitors of choice (dual 24" Dell U2415's) to at least drop back to their Amazon Prime price of $240 each, from the argh... $260 they jumped up to on Monday.

I am new at Black Friday (day and week) as well as Cyber Monday to be able to see if these might go on sale below $240 or $260. At Best Buy it is a non stocking item so they say it won't be a BF possibility for them.

Once I order them Babies, then I'll be hot to have the new Mini configured!

 

[CoastalOR]

OP: Just make sure you have a good backup plan performed regularly when using the Fusion system.
As mentioned in this link:
http://blog.macsales.com/15617-creating-your-own-fusion-drive
that I provided in your other thread:
https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...fusion-like-drive-2012.1940184/#post-22289261
"You will need a backup.
While a backup plan for your computer is something you should have anyway, this becomes even more important for Fusion Drive equipped Macs. The way Fusion is set up, if either the hard drive or the SSD fails, the data on both drives is lost. Having a reliable, frequent backup plan will be essential in protecting against data loss."

 

[Cape Dave]

OP: Just make sure you have a good backup plan performed regularly when using the Fusion system.
As mentioned in this link:
http://blog.macsales.com/15617-creating-your-own-fusion-drive
that I provided in your other thread:
https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...fusion-like-drive-2012.1940184/#post-22289261
"You will need a backup.
While a backup plan for your computer is something you should have anyway, this becomes even more important for Fusion Drive equipped Macs. The way Fusion is set up, if either the hard drive or the SSD fails, the data on both drives is lost. Having a reliable, frequent backup plan will be essential in protecting against data loss."

Triple Amen to that.

 

[davekro]

OP: Just make sure you have a good backup plan performed regularly when using the Fusion system.
As mentioned in this link:
http://blog.macsales.com/15617-creating-your-own-fusion-drive
that I provided in your other thread:
https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...fusion-like-drive-2012.1940184/#post-22289261
"You will need a backup.
While a backup plan for your computer is something you should have anyway, this becomes even more important for Fusion Drive equipped Macs. The way Fusion is set up, if either the hard drive or the SSD fails, the data on both drives is lost. Having a reliable, frequent backup plan will be essential in protecting against data loss."

Given this... Now I feel I would be better with the original thought of separating the 512 SSD and HDD, and try to set the internal HDD up as a second TimeMachine back up like discussed here:
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5849068/

Time machine backs up every hour. Honestly I don't really know how to use it for retrieval, but it's there. Before I do any upgrades, per Carbon Copy Cloner recommendations, I always clean up the OS drive by repairing permissions, repairing disk, then rebuild directory... then make a bootable clone (w/ recovery partition). So my 'oops' moments are usually solved by erasing problemed drive and copying the recent clone to it.

 

[CoastalOR]

Time machine backs up every hour. Honestly I don't really know how to use it for retrieval, but it's there. Before I do any upgrades, per Carbon Copy Cloner recommendations, I always clean up the OS drive by repairing permissions, repairing disk, then rebuild directory... then make a bootable clone (w/ recovery partition). So my 'oops' moments are usually solved by erasing problemed drive and copying the recent clone to it.

For future reference, here is an Apple link with information on setting up and restoring from Time Machine:
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201250

I have my Mac mini setup to use one external disk for Time Machine and another partition for scheduled weekly CCC clones. That way I have both available. There have been too many threads with people having issues with Time Machine when it comes time to restore to completely trust it, so I also like to have a Plan C (with CCC , I also like having a full bootable backup readily available in case there is a problem with my primary internal drive).

 

[davekro]

For future reference, here is an Apple link with information on setting up and restoring from Time Machine:
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201250

I have my Mac mini setup to use one external disk for Time Machine and another partition for scheduled weekly CCC clones. That way I have both available. There have been too many threads with people having issues with Time Machine when it comes time to restore to completely trust it, so I also like to have a Plan C (with CCC ).

Happy thanksgiving northern brother.

I did not realize CCC could be set to to automatic CCC's, Very Cool. Do you have CCC do incremental or full re-clones? Can you set the time of day, like midnight?
Do you have both your TM and CCC clones on the same drive (separate partitions)? What drive is the 'another partition' on?

 

[CoastalOR]

Happy thanksgiving northern brother.
I did not realize CCC could be set to to automatic CCC's, Very Cool. Do you have CCC do incremental or full re-clones?
Do you have both your TM and CCC clones on the same drive (separate partitions)? What drive is the 'another partition' on?

Also, Happy Thanksgiving southern brother. I escaped from Southern CA when I retired.

CCC automatically does incremental after the initial clone. I also like the CCC scheduling feature. I also like how CCC asks/lets you clone the Recovery Partition during the initial clone.
Here is a link to the CCC manual:
http://ae06f32475c7e9beef85-9203f41...ault/files/bulk_pdf/ccc4-documentation-en.pdf

I hate that Time Machine is fixed at 1 hour intervals.

I use the same external drive with multiple partitions. I use that particular drive for nothing but system backups. It can be considered somewhat risky, but I figure I would have to have a double failure at the same time. My internal drive would have to fail at the same time as the external system backup. For file archival (documents and pictures) I use a different external drive, DVDs, and some internet backup.

 

[davekro]

Started a new tread for my migration question.

 

[davekro]

Has powered down on it's own...
Is exterior temperature of 87ºF normal? My mini sits verticle on a stand. I never measured it before now (laser gauge).
The only reason I ask is that it has shut down 3 times now by itself in the past week. Always with a 'shut down incorrectly' message (like unplugged). No power outage in house, otherwise microwave time would be flashing.

After second shut down, I did find I was able to push it's power corn in slightly, then I was able to repower it up. But it happened one more time after that. Just wondering if there is any other possible things to check for this phenomenon. It has remained powered up for two days now.