still another 2009 mac mini 2x esata hack many photos

[philipma1957]

okay this time it is a cube like form very small with a max of 4tb. although mine will use 2tb. here is a parts list. any 2009 mac mini will do I used a
1)2.66ghz cto model
2) a macbook air superdrive (optional if you don't want a dvd player)
3) four hitachi 500gb 7200 rpm hdds 2.5 inch
4) two owc elite pro dual mini
see link below I used empty ones

http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire/EliteALmini/RAID/eSATA_FW800_FW400_USB

5)two 18 inch sata to esata cables. I use a green and a blue.


http://www.satacables.com/ they have a red cable that will work.



http://www.satacables.com/super-sale-sata-cable.html part number esx-12 and esx-20


6) some velcro

7) a spare mac mini top (optional if you don't mind cutting your mac mini top)

8) a caddy to replace your minis super drive if you have a 2.53 ghz 2009 server you don't need this part

http://cgi.ebay.com/12-7mm-SATA-HDD...e_Internal&hash=item20b1bd2c64#ht_2727wt_1222

9) a power source for the owc

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other World Computing/MEP2BAYM15/

10) some nice acoustifeet from :

http://www.quietpcusa.com/Acousti-P...-Feet---Black-up-to-18-lbs-4-pack-P478C0.aspx

I used ACF300715c clear lite weight model
I used

this photo shows the almost finished hack.

I am waiting on a mac superdrive. so I have an empty dvd drive case to show scale. note two owc raid0 cases this is really fast and boots esata. see the top of the spare ebay mac mini top case small hole cut. see reverse assembly of top on last two shots. note to mods I have 20 photos please forgive my consecutive posts. this is a really small build that can have up to 4tb in raid0 8gb 2.66Ghz cpu

 

[philipma1957]

reverse order green and blue esata cables green is the lower sata jack blue is the upper jack. note the velcro and the dvd/hdd caddy. this mini top is not a 2009 top so I had to remove the black dvd inside slot in order to allow the remote control eye to work

 

[philipma1957]

more shots

that little piece of aluminum goes since it is not on the 2009 top. two shots for the 1 piece on one side before and after two shots for the two pieces on the other side. before and after. I use a hand file aluminum is soft was a fast job. last shot shows the caddy with wires Velcro-ed in place.

more tomorrow. and some speed tests.

 

[philipma1957]

the velcro attachment in reverse order.

 

[philipma1957]

more shots of attachment to the caddy. also the attachment of the caddy to the 9400 bridge card this card takes the one logic/mobo jack and turns it into 2 jacks. remember to attach those screws before the entire tray is linked to the mini base. The screws can't be reached once the entire tray drops onto the mini's base.

 

[philipma1957]

THESE are the last shots for now. later today I will post some speed results. My setup will have 2 1 tb raid0 owc units. later this week I am getting a pair of samsung 64gb series 470 ssds i will post scores on that and I will also review the owc cases that i used for this.

 

[philipma1957]

here is a screen shot of xbench test. as you can see scores are good prolonged /sustained read write scores are really good 163MBs for write and 189 MB/s for read. full xbench score is 169.87 no one drive internal scores that well. Of course the classic weakness of hdds is exposed with the

random 4k write of 1.68MB/s and random 4k read of .53MB/s

still all in all this is a faster mac mini then any internal hdd. also it is tiny!

I will post scores on it with the pair of 64gb samsung series 470 ssd's in raid0 and raid1. I have some AJA disk whack scores to post. I posted the one aja disk whack score and a photo of a cable that can be used instead of the cable I used. it allows a 1 piece connection vs my 2 part connection. the male ends has 2 black plastic end outside of the metal teeth you would need to bend it or cut it.




As a complete and total aside the owc cases used for this seem to be an amazing piece of gear. they come 84 bucks empty really well built the aluminum is sturdy and the hdd has four rubber mounts/screws. They can use any sata II drive but must be matched pairs. You can also buy them prebuilt. I am going to use two of them so I grabbed external power supplies, but you can run this as fw800 stand alone. Why do I mention this because if you own a 2010 macmini 2.4GHz machine and want a better hdd this would be just as good as the internal 320gb that comes with the 2010 model. I will do some testing of it with a 2010 that I have and i will post results. I find it to look better then the guardian maximus mini. It is built with thicker gauge aluminum and other then the lcd screen the elite pro dual mini seems to be better. two other things the elite pro can come empty and it has an on off switch.


today is friday I hooked up the new samsungs!


i hooked owc elite up with the a pair of samsung 64gb series 470 ssd they are in a raid 0 setup here are scores:

 

[philipma1957]

Finished product

Okay I added an apple macbook air dvd player a remote and the second raid 0 owc using samsung ssds instead of hitachi hdds. looks really nice.

this shows that a great cube could be built with up to 4 2.5 inch ssd/hdds inside a blu-ray player a good cpu and a good gpu . The mac mini part has a lot of room in it as the dvd and the hdd are pulled. putting a better cpu and a bett gpu would be easy to do. As is the setup I built is really nice for ht. It can do a lot. It is really small. so apple if you look just go and and build this unit for us. now I figure apple won't but they may make the 2011 mini as such that you can stack on a 2 hdd/ssd t-bolt that would smoke.



You can use a 2009 with a 2.0 GHz cpu if you want to do


netflix streaming
eyetv recording or watching
dvd watching not blu-ray


this can have as much as 4tb of hdd. it is small and looks nice. too bad the 2010 can't do this mod. I wonder what the 2011 will let us do.

 

[BlakeBrattina]

Now that is some serious work!

 

[blueroom]

Neat but would kill the resale value and looks of the Mac Mini. If it were me I'd simply put a fast NAS on my LAN.

 

[philipma1957]

I have the parts to set it back to stock in 30 minutes. Nas are good though but not as fast.

 

[blueroom]

How do you patch the holes in the top?

How much speed do you need for photos? Movies & Music stream perfectly over my WiFi network to several devices at once. My wired connection (an old QuadCore PC) doesn't take long to do much of anything and acts as an iTunes server / Handbrake encoder.

It's nice to have speed, but for what?

 

[philipma1957]

that is not the oem top. picked it up for 15 bucks on ebay.

wi fi does not work in my area due to 5 military bases. drop outs are constant when the jets do maneuvers and tests.

this setup is not for most. a good fast nas comes close in speed. this piece of gear was done more because I get bored with simple mods of minis then any other reason. besides t-bolt will make this obsolete in a month or two.

 

[CocoaTurtle]

Awesome! Great job on the mod, looks really sweet! I'd love to build something like that!

 

[OldSchoolMacGuy]

Sweet. I'd considered doing this on my original Intel mini. I do with someone would offer a nice kit to put just an eSATA port on the back.

 

[philipma1957]

okay I received a set of samsung 1tb 2.5 inch hdds slim height 9.5mm they will fit in a 2009 or a 2010 macmini. I put the two in my owc 2 drive raid case and ran tests. the 2tb raid0 with 2 1tb samsungs is a little bit faster then the 1 tb raid0 with 2 hitachi's

 

[henlij]

Great mod. Question though, where did you get the small adapter? (see attached)

 

[philipma1957]

I will look for link.

 

[dreko]

esata hack

Hi Phillip


I'm curious, can you shoot me a PM, or post here, exactly what was need to make this mod functional?

I can't seem to find any info online, xlr8yourmac says this mod isn't possible at all... so I'm curious....

thanks

 

[philipma1957]

missed this question. parts are hard to find. i built 2 or 3 of these. I sold one on ebay the other I set back to stock.


i have the used parts somewhere.


which mini is yours?