![]() If you have a 2012 model, you will want to determine the configuration of your Mac mini's drives prior to ordering. NOTE: A small number of 2012 units were shipped with the drive mounted in the upper drive bay rather than the more typical lower bay shown in this video. Technical support for this DIY product consists only of this video. OWC assumes no responsibility for damage that may occur during the install. Running out of storage space in your Mac mini or looking to improve performance with an OWC SSD? Now you can add a second 9.5mm or smaller 2.5" SATA Hard Drive or Solid State Drive (sold separately) to your 2011, 2012 or Later Mac mini.īefore attempting to perform this installation, please watch the following instructional video in its entirety to determine your ability to perform this complex procedure. Running out of storage space in your Mac mini or looking to improve performance with an OWC SSD? Now you can add a second 9.5mm or smaller 2.5" SATA Hard Drive or Solid State Drive (sold separately) to your 2011 & 2012 Mac mini. Firewire 800 is probably the fastest/cheapest solution to speed up your external storage.OWC Data Doubler' SSD/2.5" Hard Drive Installation Kit Only high performance modern Synology's and the like deliver full gigabit throughput. I do all the large file transfers with Gigabit, but a cheap gigabit external drive is usually nowhere as fast as a Mac on gigabit. You can also look for a Firewire 800 enclosure for the library. If you have the iPhoto library external, USB2 really is your problem, not the ram or internal drive! I put my left-overs from a 2011 mini in this one, with the scorpio, so that was a 70 bucks update really improving the machine. I have the 2.26 boot with the suggested update in 25 seconds.Īlso, look for 1333mhz RAM. Many modern SSD's can do around 6Gb/s, but in this mac they will be slowed down to 3Gb/s because of the bus. You say you put the files external, but USB2 is really slow with 480Mb/s. Maybe you can get both 4Gb and a Scorpio Black 750Gb drive. So, to recap, I recommend you to up the memory first, then the SSD. Also, I recommend 250-256 SSD size or larger, as anymore, 120GB seems small, this will give you some room for storage (unless you want to use an external drive for storage). ![]() I have used Sandforce SSDs in Macs, but not with that vintage of controller. But, I am not certain of that, so take it for what it's worth. Sandisk Extreme had to issue a special firmware to be Mac SATA II compatible). A personal opinion, but I would avoid Sandforce drives, as some have had difficulty in Macs with SATA II controllers in them (e.g. I'm sure other forum members will have opinions to offer on that. My personal choice would be a Samsung 840 (EVO or otherwise) as this is known for reliability and "bang for the buck", but you can look at others for a sale or if you want something else. If you want somewhat faster disk access in the interim, consider a 7200 rpm disk, but actually, you are better off going the SSD route instead of "wasting" the money on the faster HDD now.Īs far as SSDs, relative speed does not matter as much due to the SATA II interface, as any SATA III SSD will saturate your bandwidth limiting top speed, so go for reliability. If you want to do the SSD now, remember that this has a Sata II speed, 3 gb/s, so you will be "bottlenecked" as far as maximum speed, however, it will be worlds faster than any hard drive upgrade. Might as well put them both in at the same time while you are in the case.Īs far as the SSD goes, you can wait until later, but the original drive in the Minis of that age were very slow (Fujitsu, I think?), so you will probably still see beach balls on disk access still (but the memory upgrade will definitely help). I would recommend 2 4 GB sticks as opposed to 1 8GB stick, for compatibility and to allow dual channel CPU access. I would definitely max that out to the 8GB first, as it will help with the beach balls. See this reference about this model and specs:īased on this, it seems you have a maximum of 8GB Ram limit, 1066 MHz PC3-8500 DDR3 SO-DIMMs. ![]() Congratulations on your Mini 2009! You did not say whether it is an Early 2009, or Late 2009, but based on the hard drive spec of 120GB, I suspect you have an early 2009. ![]()
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