Worth putting SSD in Late '09 Mini and other questions...

[GoldfishRT]

So I may end up with a late '09 2.66Ghz Mini and being the cute little machine it is I'd like to make some use of it. I know I can patch Sierra to run on it once El Capitan's extended support ends, and I've got 8GB of ram to stick into it. So while I'm in there I'm definitely going to be upgrading the hard drive.

For such a cheap machine (<$150) I'm wondering if it'd be worth putting in an SSD. I have a 1TB 7200rpm Western Digital laptop drive laying around and that would kind of be my preferred option, considering I'm thinking I want this to be sort of a media PC. But if it supports SSDs well I'd be interested going that route. It made a world of difference on the MacBook Pro I'm typing on.

On that note, the 9400m supports h.264 correct? So shouldn't have issues with internet video streams?

I don't expect it to be the fastest machine in the world but I am interested to hear what people haven't been able to do on one.

 

[Cave Man]

Yes, the 9400m has hardware encoding/decoding of h.264. An SSD will certainly improve it as the spinning drive is the weakest link. But for a media server, even a 5400 rpm drive would suffice. Those go up to 5 TB now but will require a bit of effort to seat it since it's a 15mm drive.

 

[Jambalaya]

Definitely. I put in a 750gb 7200rpm WD spinner in mine around 2014 (ish) as I wanted 500gb plus and such an ssd was too pricey at the time. The machine runs well with 8gb ram too (came with 2!!). I have been thinking about getting a 500ssd and using the WD in a caddy, most of space is used up with movies (300gb) which don't even need to be on the main drive.

 

[loby]

So I may end up with a late '09 2.66Ghz Mini and being the cute little machine it is I'd like to make some use of it. I know I can patch Sierra to run on it once El Capitan's extended support ends, and I've got 8GB of ram to stick into it. So while I'm in there I'm definitely going to be upgrading the hard drive.

For such a cheap machine (<$150) I'm wondering if it'd be worth putting in an SSD. I have a 1TB 7200rpm Western Digital laptop drive laying around and that would kind of be my preferred option, considering I'm thinking I want this to be sort of a media PC. But if it supports SSDs well I'd be interested going that route. It made a world of difference on the MacBook Pro I'm typing on.

On that note, the 9400m supports h.264 correct? So shouldn't have issues with internet video streams?

I don't expect it to be the fastest machine in the world but I am interested to hear what people haven't been able to do on one.

Still usable! My wife still uses it as her main computer. I put an SSD in it and max the RAM out. I hear users use it as a media server still, but as a general purpose system, it still has some life. Know that it runs only with SATA II speeds (fast enough) and make sure you get the right SSD for it due to the chip set or you may be limited to 1.5gb speeds instead of 3.0.

Just look around the forum and you can find the information you need to make the right decisions on selecting SSDs.