Alafiama

Q: Can My late 2009 Mini handle a 3Tb HDD?

Hello. I have a late 2009 Mini running OS 10.9.5. with a 2.26 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor. I currently have 8 GB of 1067 MHz DDR3 RAM in it which seems adequate to me. I have run out of space on my current 1Tb hard drive and I'm looking to upgrade. I've found both 2TB and 3TB hdd in 9.5mm 2.5" sizes. However, will my Mini recognize the larger size hard drives? I'm going to be upgrading my back up drive to double the size of the new hard drive I get as well. Any advice is greatly appreciated!

Mac mini, OS X Mavericks (10.9.5), 2.26 Intel Core 2 Duo, 8GB Ram

Posted on Aug 20, 2016 5:14 PM

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Q: Can My late 2009 Mini handle a 3Tb HDD?

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  • by Lanny,

    Lanny Lanny Aug 20, 2016 5:41 PM in response to Alafiama
    Level 5 (7,895 points)
    Desktops
    Aug 20, 2016 5:41 PM in response to Alafiama
  • by lllaass,

    lllaass lllaass Aug 21, 2016 12:58 AM in response to Lanny
    Level 10 (187,749 points)
    Desktops
    Aug 21, 2016 12:58 AM in response to Lanny

    There is a bug is in the ERASE function in Disk Utility, 10.8.4 and later. If you can use PARTITION directly without ERASE, you will also avoid the Bug.

    Using a Disk Utility from any older Mac OS X, including the 10.6 DVD (if your Mac can boot from it) or any saved Installer DVD or thumb drive will work.

     

    Another work-around is to move that drive to an external enclosure and Erase it there (provided your enclosure is modern enough to deal with drives over 2.2TB.


     

    •   When you ERASE a drive over 2.2TB in an Internal Drive bay, it is given the Logical Volume stuff in Mac OS X 10.8.3 and later. Many readers here considered that a BUG. Logical Volume Group partitions were not needed, and interfered with re-ERASE and other functions. There are several wildly different work arounds:

     

    Re-ERASE in an external enclosure, provided your can accommodate drives over 2.2TB (really old ones can not).

    Re-ERASE using Mac OS X or Recovery_HD or Installer the predates 10.8.3

    Manually delete the Logical Volume group partitions using Terminal.

    You may or may not run into this problem:

    For Internal sled mounting:

    The screw-depth penetration for 'bottom-mounting screws adjacent to the platters' on some drives over 3TB have been shortened. This may mean that the sled screws bottom out before they fit snugly and begin to compress the washers on the sled. If this is the case, your drive will not sit flat on the sled, and will not mate with the backplane connector without additional adjustment.

      OWC also now sells sleds that uses alternate mounting holes in the HD to avoid that problem.

    You can shorten those screws, or put a washer under the heads to ensure they can be made snug in the allowed depth. Also, now OWC/Macsales now sells sleds that use the alternate mounting screw locations to avoid this problem. However, these sleds are only for the 2009 and later Pros