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Top Mac Mini Vs. bottom iMac

Cave Man said:
Yeah, I know - she spent a lot more time with you then I did. I just can't resist throwing a little humor in now and then.

Keep us posted on your progression with the mini.
Click to expand...

Hi Cave Man and iAlice,
I got my Mac Mini on Friday and I have been busy all weekend playing with it and transferring files from my pc to my new Mac. It is so cool. Very happy with it. Here are a couple of pics of my setup. One is of the complete set up where I am still transferring files so the pc is in the picture as well. but if you look closely you will see my Mac Mini with the MiniStacker underneath it. I love it. Very Happy with it.
 

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Cave Man said:
1. Boot your mini off its internal drive.
2. Download the free program Carbon Copy Cloner and install it.
3. Plug in and power up your MiniStack (make sure the toggle switch is set to Firwire so it will boot from FW instead of USB2).
4. Launch Applications/Utilities/Disk Utility and format the MiniStack drive and set the number and sizes of partitions as you desire. Quit Disk Utility when done.
5. Launch Carbon Copy Cloner and clone your internal Mini's boot drive to the desired partition on the MiniStack. Make sure you set the "make bootable" option. This will take some time, depending on the size of the contents on your hard drive.
6. When done, launch System Preferences from the blue Apple. Select the Startup Disk pane and choose the bootable partion that you just cloned.
7. Restart your Mac Mini - it should boot from the MiniStack.
8. Once rebooted, launch Disk Utility and format your Mini's internal hard drive.

That's it! This is how I did mine, except that my MiniStack's drive is a single partition (now up to 500 gb) and my internal 100 gig drive has two partitions - a Mac OS install and a Win XP install.
Click to expand...

Cave Man, question for you.
How much faster is it to do the above moving the main operating system from the internal drive to the MiniStacker.. I mean will I really notice a difference in performance? Or will it be just a little bit?
 
WizardHunt said:
Cave Man, question for you.
How much faster is it to do the above moving the main operating system from the internal drive to the MiniStacker.. I mean will I really notice a difference in performance? Or will it be just a little bit?
Click to expand...

Carbon Copy Cloner will be much faster than a fresh install followed by Migration Assistant, if that's what you mean. If you're referring to FW400/7200 rpm vs. the 5400 rpm internal SATA drive, I'm not certain. But I can tell you that my Mini performs very well using the FW400 boot drive from the MiniStack.
 
Cave Man said:
Carbon Copy Cloner will be much faster than a fresh install followed by Migration Assistant, if that's what you mean. If you're referring to FW400/7200 rpm vs. the 5400 rpm internal SATA drive, I'm not certain. But I can tell you that my Mini performs very well using the FW400 boot drive from the MiniStack.
Click to expand...

Hmmm, it is hard for me to believe that going through a fire wire connection as a boot drive is faster than a built in hardware based boot drive even though the firewire based one is 7200 rpm and the internal is 5400 rpm SATA.

I am just wondering if it is worth it for me to move to my Ministacker the whole thing on my internal drive rather than just use my ministacker as a data drive like a source to keep my movies that I would be editing and so on. What do you think?
 
WizardHunt said:
Hi Cave Man and iAlice,
I got my Mac Mini on Friday and I have been busy all weekend playing with it and transferring files from my pc to my new Mac. It is so cool. Very happy with it. Here are a couple of pics of my setup. One is of the complete set up where I am still transferring files so the pc is in the picture as well. but if you look closely you will see my Mac Mini with the MiniStacker underneath it. I love it. Very Happy with it.
Click to expand...

Hi WizardHunt (and Cave Man!), thanks for the photos of your set up! Love it, especially how the Mini and its Stack are so hard to find in the picture. Mine seems surprisingly small and very quiet, too. I would have commented sooner, but I've been on a trip along the beautiful Columbia River.

Now I'm busy making a trip movie using iMovie 6 HD on my mini; I ordered Final Cut Express today though because I'm not that thrilled with iMovie 6 HD (bugs and crashes and slow rendering). First I tried the new iMovie 7 but even though the skimming is cool and it's fast at rendering, it offers almost no control over things like audio clips, so I had to start again in iMovie 6 HD. At least I'll be able to import my iMovie 6 HD projects into Final Cut Express directly, whereas I was unable to import my iMovie 7 files directly into iMovie 6 HD. What we need is a stable, full-featured iMovie 8 that combines the best of both versions!

Still love my mini, plus I ordered the 16G "WiPod" (my favorite name for the new iPod Touch), and can't wait to get my hands on that, too!

Have fun, guys,
--Alice
 
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