Replacing HD in 2009 Mac Mini

[finster]

Hi all,

I've just bought a second-hand 2009 Mini from ebay, but the hard drive is making a clicking (actually more of a ticking) sound every 10 seconds or so.

I was thinking of upgrading the 120gb hard drive (Fujitsu MHZ2120BH G1) anyway, as I have a spare 2.5" 500gb SATA drive. The model is a Seagate Momentus 5400.6 (ST9500325AS) - will this be OK? Do you think I'll see any speed increase, or should I get a 7200rpm drive instead?

Thanks.

 

[alust2013]

That would work fine. You would see a modest speed increase, but you would see more if you bought a 7200 RPM drive.

 

[michael.lauden]

If I personally were upgrading my mini, I would drop in an SSD as boot drive and just connect it up to a network (with big networked external drives).

But since you have one lying around... here are the benchmarked performances of both drives you listed. The Seagate should be quite a bit faster!

http://www.harddrivebenchmark.net/hdd_lookup.php?cpu=FUJITSU+MHZ2120BH+G1

just a quick google!

 

[finster]

Thanks for the replies, the benchmarks give a score of 425 for my Seagate one against 283 for the stock Fujitsu one so looks worth it.

Although you've got me thinking about sticking an SSD in there instead, but must resist...

Cheers.

 

[Stan Mikulenka]

Hi finster,
I have these 2 SSDs (Corsair inside, Kingston in external enclosure):

 

[finster]

Thanks all,

Just to follow this up, I've performed the upgrade (fairly easy once I'd got the top off) and I've seen a respectable speed increase. According to NovaBench, my Drive Write Speed has gone from 46 MB/s on the stock 120gb drive to 57 MB/s on the 500gb Seagate one.

So definitely worth it (although I'm still tempted with an SSD!)

Cheers.

 

[mdgm]

If you don't need the optical drive in the Mini you could purchase a special data doubler for the 09 Mini and use that to add a SSD to your Mac. Then you could use the SSD for boot and apps and the 500GB drive to store your data.

 

[finster]

If you don't need the optical drive in the Mini you could purchase a special data doubler for the 09 Mini and use that to add a SSD to your Mac. Then you could use the SSD for boot and apps and the 500GB drive to store your data.

Thanks - that's worth thinking about. Do you have any links / more info on this device?

Cheers.

 

[mdgm]

OWC sells one: http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other World Computing/DDMMCL0GB/

Other companies possibly may as well.

Personally I like having an internal optical drive so probably wouldn't go down this path, but some don't mind losing the internal optical drive.

 

[finster]

Thanks - very interesting. I'll bear it in mind if I decide to try an SSD...