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Q: How to tell which drive is the system drive in a mac mini 2012?

just got a 2012 mac mini which has two drives in it and I'm going to replace one of them with an SSD for the system drive. I saw a few posts which say to look in System info under Sata and the drives will be listed as upper and lower. Unfortunately on my system when I look under Sata is shows just one drive, and under storage is shows the other.

 

Is there a way to tell which drive is upper and which is lower? And should the new ssd I put in for the system be in the slot that shows up under sata, or under storage?

 

thanks!

Posted on Aug 10, 2015 2:30 PM

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Q: How to tell which drive is the system drive in a mac mini 2012?

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  • by lllaass,

    lllaass lllaass Aug 10, 2015 3:22 PM in response to Meetoo
    Level 10 (189,849 points)
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    Aug 10, 2015 3:22 PM in response to Meetoo

    Post a screen shot of what disk utility shows and what storage shows

    How to take a screenshot on your


    here is how you should be able to tell

    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. If you have a 2012 model, you will want to determine the configuration of your Mac mini's drives prior to ordering. To do this, open Applications/Utilities/Disk Utility.app and click on the grey drive icon at the left-edge of the window. If you see "Lower" after the "Connection ID" at the bottom-left corner of the window, you may proceed using the standard installation instructions. If you see "Upper" then you have a special configuration which will need additional components, and you will need to also refer to the Addendum video.


    Above from:


    Do you have a fusion drive now?

    Is the Fusion Drive option installed on my knew imac?

  • by Meetoo,

    Meetoo Meetoo Aug 10, 2015 5:07 PM in response to lllaass
    Level 1 (13 points)
    Desktops
    Aug 10, 2015 5:07 PM in response to lllaass

    Thanks very much! In Disk Utility I can indeed see that the first drive on left hand column is the drive with the system on it. For Connection ID below it shows: Upper. The second drive is 'Lower'.

     

    Will the 'Upper' drive be the one on top when I open the mac mini? I had read somewhere that the opposite is actually the case. I guess because when the mac mini is sitting in its normal postion, the order of those drives is actually physically reversed. Confusing!

  • by lllaass,

    lllaass lllaass Aug 11, 2015 2:24 AM in response to Meetoo
    Level 10 (189,849 points)
    Desktops
    Aug 11, 2015 2:24 AM in response to Meetoo

    The upper drive is closest to the top of the Mac when the Mac is in its normal position.

    When you flip the Mac over and remove the round black cover the lower drive is the one now on top . That is the one you can readily see and is not that hard to access/replace. Replacing the upper drive requires more disassembly.